THE  WASTED  ISLAND 


\ 


THE 
WASTED  ISLAND 


BY 

EIMAR  O'DUFFY 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 
BT  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


VAtL-BALLOU     COMPANY 


TO 

MY  MOTHER 


2058017 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON I 

II     GLENCOOLE 22 

III  END  OF  A  STORY 40 

IV  YOUNG  ENGLAND 49 

V      WlLLOUGHBY  TOWERS IOI 

VI  DUBLIN 124 

VII  STEPHEN 169 

VIII  A  DEAD  HAND 190 

IX  A  MEETING 212 

X  THE  RUSTY  SWORD 239 

XI  WAITING .  .  .270 

XII  GUNS 302 

XIII  WAR 6  *.     .     .-   .  334 

XIV  AN  AMATEUR  ARMY 391 

XV    GATHERING  CLOUDS 441 

XVI     CATASTROPHE        - .  * 496 


THE  WASTED  ISLAND 


THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

CHAPTER  I 


A    GENTLEMAN  S   SON 


LOVE'S  main  function  is  to  make  the  world  go  round  and 
he  cares  nothing  for  the  subsequent  fate  of  the  instru- 
ments he  uses  to  that  end.  "  From  fairest  creatures  we  desire 
increase  "  and  many  a  clever  young  man  who  has  been  caught 
in  Nature's  lure  has  spent  a  life  of  vain  regrets  unconsoled  by 
the  physical  perfection  of  the  offspring  for  whom  he  has  sacri- 
ficed his  happiness. 

One  such  was  that  handsome  and  plausible  young  physician 
Eugene  Lascelles  who,  one  night  of  wonder  in  a  garden  by 
the  sea,  told  pretty,  foolish,  affectionate  Alice  Reilly  that  he 
loved  her,  and  in  due  course  led  her  to  the  altar.  So  far  as 
their  personal  happiness  was  concerned  their  wedding  was  a 
disaster.  The  honeymoon  itself  revealed  insurmountable  bar- 
riers between  their  souls:  six  months  of  married  life  accentu- 
ated them.  He  was  too  selfish  and  she  was  too  stupid  to 
make  the  best  of  things  and  in  another  year  all  pretence  of 
agreement  between  them  was  gone:  hatred  even  was  begin- 
ning to  creep  into  the  soul  of  the  man  and  despair  into  that 
of  the  woman.  It  remained  to  be  seen  whether  Nature 
would  justify  her  trickery  by  making  the  union  fertile.  Alice 
longed  for  a  son  in  the  hope  of  thereby  regaining  her  hus- 
band's affections ;  and  to  him  a  son  was  a  necessity  to  console 
him  for  his  disappointment  in  his  wife.  So  in  patient  long- 
ing the  third  year  of  their  marriage  went  by;  in  desperate 
longing  the  fourth.  And  then,  in  the  spring-time  of  the  first 
year  of  the  closing  decade  of  the  century,  Bernard  was  born. 


2  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

2 

Dr.  Lascelles  stood  by  his  wife's  bedside  and  looked  down 
on  his  three  day  old  son. 

"  He'll  be  like  his  father,  won't  he?  "  said  Alice. 

"  He's  a  Lascelles  all  right,"  assented  her  husband  .  .  . 
"  But  he  has  your  eyes,"  he  added,  thinking  she  deserved  some 
commendation. 

"  Really?     Do  you  think  so?  "  she  said  happily. 

He  hated  her  habit  of  answering  everything  with  a  further 
question,  but  on  this  occasion  made  no  comment.  His  wife 
smiled  to  see  him  take  the  tiny  fist  of  his  son  in  his  fine,  white, 
capable  hands. 

"  My  son,"  he  said. 

To  himself  he  was  saying: 

"  Mustn't  let  her  have  too  much  to  say  in  his  up-bringing. 
I'll  make  a  man  of  him  .  .  .  make  him  a  success  in  life  .  .  . 
she  shan't  teach  him  any  damned  nonsense." 

He  lingered  a  moment  contemplating  his  son,  then  kissed 
his  wife  and  went  out. 

He  went  through  his  work  that  day  in  a  state  of  preoccu- 
pation, son  and  wife  alternately  sharing  his  thoughts. 

"  Why' did  I  marry  her?  Better  not  ask  myself  that  again. 
.  .  .  Doesn't  bear  examination.  ...  I  once  thought  her 
witty.  How  often  has  she  told  me  the  story  of  her  Aunt 
Jane  and  the  pot  of  mustard? 

"  Mustn't  exasperate  myself.  The  Boy  is  some  compen- 
sation after  all.  I'll  make  a  man  of  him  .  .  .  keep  him  out 
of  her  clutches  .  .  .  her  rotten  little  ideas  and  superstitions. 
Good  lord! 

"  I  promised  her  he'd  be  a  Catholic,  but  she  shan't  make 
a  Jesuit  of  him.  .  .  .  My  son  a  Jesuit !  Not  likely  .  .  .  nor 
any  sort  of  a  priest. 

"  I'll  make  him  a  good  staunch  Britisher  for  all  that  he's 
a  Catholic.  .  .  .  Must  keep  that  Fenian  brother  of  Alice's 
away  from  the  house  .  .  .  sarcastic,  disloyal  young  hound !  " 

His  thoughts  here  became  incoherent.  Clarifying  again 
they  reverted  to  his  son. 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  3 

"  Will  Alice  try  to  make  him  a  Nationalist  as  well  as  a 
Catholic?  Bah!  She's  no  politician.  She  hasn't  the  brains. 
.  .  .  Wish  she  had,  in  a  way. 

"Why  did  I  marry  a  woman  without  any  brains?  .  .  . 
Says  she's  a  heart  anyway.  So  she  has.  She's  so  unselfish 
that  she  makes  my  life  a  burden  to  me.  .  .  .  Damn  these 
religious  people." 

He  meditated  bitterly  on  the  folly  of  his  marriage. 

"  What  a  hot-headed  sentimental  young  fool  I  was.  She 
was  beautiful  and  sweet,  and  I  thought  her  witty.  .  .  .  That 
story  of  her  Aunt  Jane  .  .  .  good  lord! 

"  Well,  she  might  have  been  worse.  .  .  .  She  keeps  the 
house  well, —  and  there's  the  boy.  .  .  .  Jove,  I  don't  half 
realize  that  I've  got  a  son.  .  .  .  Must  be  nicer  to  her  for 
his  sake.  After  all,  she's  his  mother  .  .  . 

"  But  how  many  more  times  must  I  listen  to  the  story  of 
her  Aunt  Jane  and  the  pot  of  mustard  ?  " 

With  a  deliberate  effort  he  put  his  wife's  shortcomings 
out  of  his  head  and  made  plans  for  the  boy.  Now  if  Eu- 
gene Lascelles  was  dissatisfied  with  the  course  of  his  life  he 
was  eminently  satisfied  with  himself.  Indeed  his  main  ob- 
jection to  his  wife  was  her  difference  from  himself,  and  when 
he  resolved  to  make  a  man  of  his  son  he  meant  to  make  him 
as  like  himself  as  possible. 

"  I'll  make  a  success  of  him.  He'll  be  a  credit  to  his  fa- 
ther. .  .  .  Public  School  and  Varsity  man  of  course.  .  .  . 
Shall  it  be  Eton  or  Harrow?  .  .  .  And  after  that,  Oxford 
probably.  .  .  .  Shall  I  put  him  in  the  Army?" 

This  consideration  made  him  pause.  The  Army  had  much 
to  recommend  it  socially ;  but  then, —  a  chance  bullet  in  a 
skirmish  on  the  outposts  of  the  Empire,  and  twenty  years  of 
work  and  hope  thrown  away. 

"  No.  We  can  do  better  than  that.  A  Public  School 
and  Varsity  man  has  the  Empire  at  his  feet." 

He  visioned  wonderful  things. 

"  But,  damn  it,  I'd  forgotten  his  religion.  He'll  have  to 
go  to  one  of  those  Jesuit  holes,  I  suppose.  .  .  .  Good  lord! 


4  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

What  would  my  poor  father  have  said  to  that?  Break  with 
the  family  tradition,  isn't  it? 

"  Still,  Ashbury  ranks  as  a  Public  School  ...  and  he'll 
go  to  Oxford  anyway." 

He  began  to  feel  satisfied  that  after  all  the  divergence  of 
the  boy's  career  from  the  family  tradition  would  be  but  small. 
The  Lascelles,  be  it  noted,  were  descended  from  a  Huguenot 
who  had  settled  in  Queen's  County  early  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and,  owing  to  the  laws  then  in  force,  acquired  &t 
a  very  low  price  an  estate  which  had  been  confiscated  from 
the  native  owners  in  the  name  of  civilization  and  religion. 
This  gentleman  had  married  a  lady  of  his  own  faith  and 
nationality,  and  reared  his  family  along  with  the  neighbour- 
ing Protestant  settlers  in  such  a  manner  as  to  preserve  them 
from  all  contact  with  and  contamination  from  the  surround- 
ing Papist  multitude.  Fortune,  industry,  and  the  turn  of 
history  favoured  the  Lascelles.  From  being  persecuted  they 
became  persecutors,  and  in  defence  of  their  rights  in  this 
prerogative  they  fought  for  William  at  the  Boyne  and  helped 
to  rivet  the  chains  on  their  beaten  countrymen  after  Lim- 
erick. During  the  century-long  swoon  in  which  Ireland 
then  lay,  they  gained  prosperity  in  peace,  and  eventually, 
finding  their  prosperity  threatened  by  their  erstwhile  pro- 
tector, flew  to  arms,  inscribed  "  Free  Trade  or  Else " 

on  their  banners,  and  along  with  their  kind  almost  suc- 
ceeded in  disrupting  the  British  Empire.  They  helped  to 
dragoon  the  rebels  in  '98;  petitioned  violently  against  the 
Union  in  '99;  protested  as  violently  against  its  repeal  in 
1845;  and  then,  save  for  passive  and  financial  support  of 
the  Unionist  Cause,  dropped  out  of  public  life. 

Such  was  the  ancestry  of  which  young  Bernard  was  to  be 
made  worthy,  a  task  requiring  on  the  father's  part  much  toil 
and  vigilance.  There  was  much  the  boy  must  learn ;  there 
was  more  of  which  he  must  be  kept  ignorant.  There  were 
fixed  ideas  to  be  implanted  in  him ;  and  fancies  —  of  course 
the  boy  would  have  fancies  —  to  be  eradicated.  There  were 
certain  courses  which  his  mind  must  take,  and  he,  the  father, 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  5 

would   trace  them  out   and   guide   him   accordingly.     Yes. 
He  would  make  a  man  of  his  son. 

3 

"  So  this  is  my  nephew !  " 

Mrs.  Lascelles  enjoyed  complacently  her  brother's  homage 
to  her  son.  She  asked  the  usual  question. 

"  There's  far  too  much  of  his  Majesty  in  him,"  Chris- 
topher replied.  "  I  wish  he  was  more  like  you." 

A  long  rambling  talk  followed.  She  was  much  more  at 
home  with  her  brother  than  with  her  husband,  and  she  be- 
came quite  animated  with  tales  and  praises  of  young  Ber- 
nard. Christopher  listened  sympathetically.  He  was  a  tall, 
self-possessed  young  man,  who  never  seemed  completely  se- 
rious, a  perpetual  puzzle  to  his  brother-in-law.  He  closely 
resembled  his  sister  in  features,  but  the  play  of  thought  and 
intelligence  across  them  caused  a  world  of  difference  in  ex- 
pression. 

"How's  his  Majesty  been  behaving  himself  lately?"  he 
asked.  "  Oh,  you  needn't  answer.  I  can  read  it  in  your 
eyes." 

"  I  wish  you  wouldn't  call  him  that  name,  Chris." 

"  It  suits  him  better  than  his  own,  anyway.  You'd  think 
he  was  the  hero  of  a  novel  with  that  mouthful." 

"  You'll  be  his  godfather,  won't  you,  Chris?  " 

"  What  does  he  want  with  a  godfather  at  his  age  ?  " 

"  Chris,  you  silly !  I  didn't  mean  Eugene's.  I  meant  the 
baby's." 

"  It's  a  big  responsibility.  Don't  I  have  to  guarantee  that 
he'll  renounce  the  devil  and  all  that  sort  of  thing?  " 

"  No.  If  you  hold  him  without  dropping  him  at  the 
christening  it's  all  we'll  expect  from  you." 

Dr.  Lascelles  returning  from  work  seemed  little  pleased 
at  meeting  his  brother-in-law. 

"Still  clinging  to  effete  old  Yurrop?"  he  said,  speaking 
jocularly  to  conceal  his  displeasure.  "  I  thought  Wall  Street 
would  have  recalled  you  to  her  yearning  bosom  before  this." 


6  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Christopher  answered  seriously.  The  Doctor's  pleasan- 
tries never  moved  him  to  laughter. 

"  I  meant  to  go  tomorrow,"  he  said,  "  but  now  I  must 
wait  for  the  christening.  Alice  has  asked  me  to  be  the  god- 
father, you  know." 

The  Doctor  said  "  Oh  ?  "  colourlessly,  and  changed  the 
conversation.  A  few  minutes  later  the  two  men  left  the 
room  together  and  descended  to  the  hall.  Here  Lascelles 
drew  Christopher  into  his  consulting  room  and  confronted 
him  nervously. 

"  Look  here,"  he  said,  "  you're  going  to  be  my  boy's  god- 
father. I  trust  you  won't  abuse  that  position." 

"  He  shall  have  a  christening  mug  as  good  as  can  be  got," 
replied  the  other  impassively,  "  and  on  every  birthday  an 
increasingly  valuable  present." 

The  Doctor  seemed  nonplussed. 

"  Look  here,"  he  said  irritably,  "  you  don't  seem  to  catch 
my  meaning.  ...  I  don't  want  you  to  make  a  Nationalist 
of  him." 

"You  seem  to  think  very  highly  of  my  powers  as  a 
proselytiser,"  replied  the  younger  man.  "  Or  is  it  the  cause 
itself  you're  flattering?  " 

"  Nothing  of  the  sort,"  said  the  Doctor  stiffly.  "  I'm 
merely  informing  you  of  my  wishes." 

"  Well,  the  boy's  young  yet,  and  he  may  never  be  any  use. 
They're  born,  not  made,  you  know.  Good-bye,  old  man. 
I'm  off  to  see  about  that  mug." 

4 

Young  Bernard  broke  no  traditions  in  the  early  years  of 
his  growth.  He  grew  normally;  he  laughed  and  cried 
normally;  he  ate  normally;  he  got  sick  normally;  his  teeth 
erupted  normally ;  his  fontanelles  closed  normally ;  he  walked 
and  talked  at  a  normal  age.  His  mother  adored  him  and 
his  father  gave  him  first  place  among  all  his  possessions. 
He  had  a  normal  number  of  brothers  and  sisters:  two  of 
each  to  particularize. 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  7 

He  passed  his  childhood  in  a  bright  airy  nursery  sur- 
rounded with  toys  and  comforts.  Pleasant  pictures  adorned 
the  walls.  There  were  illustrated  nursery  rimes;  photo- 
graphs of  Queen  Victoria  and  her  consort  and  the  Prince  of 
Wales;  coloured  representations  of  victorious  British  sol- 
diers charging  Zulus;  and  a  supplement  from  a  Christmas 
annual  depicting  a  little  boy  wearing  his  father's  red  tunic, 
labelled  "  A  Chip  of  the  Old  Block" 

With  his  brothers  and  sisters  he  grew  up  as  a  gentleman's 
child  should.  He  was  washed  and  combed  regularly,  and 
neatly  and  prettily  dressed.  He  was  trained  to  be  "  good," 
which  meant  not  being  a  nuisance  to  nurse;  and  to  be  polite 
to  visitors,  which  meant  answering  their  inane  questions 
nicely  without  sheepishness  or  giggling.  He  learnt  his 
A.  B.  C.  and  how  to  count  and  how  to  recite  simple  verses 
about  lambs  and  spiders.  He  was  taken  to  the  seaside  in 
the  summer  and  to  the  Pantomime  at  Christmas.  In  short, 
he  had  a  very  pleasant  time,  and  he  was  a  very  nice  little 
boy. 

His  first  great  crime  against  tradition  was  committed  at 
the  age  of  six,  when  one  terrible  day  he  played  with  Hektor 
O'Flaherty.  For  a  full  realization  of  the  enormity  of  this 
deed  the  circumstances  under  which  he  came  to  be  forbidden 
to  do  so  must  first  be  told.  Hektor  O'Flaherty  was  a  dom- 
ineering youth  of  eight,  the  leader  of  a  gang  of  youngsters 
whose  martial  games  Bernard  had  long  wished  to  join. 
Stephen's  Green,  the  scene  of  their  warlike  operations,  was 
also  the  place  to  which  nurse  each  morning  led  the  decorous 
cavalcade  of  Dr.  Lascelles'  children,  consisting  at  the  time  of 
Alice  in  the  perambulator,  Eugene,  aged  four,  holding  on  to 
nurse's  skirts,  and  Bernard  ranging  free  in  all  the  independ- 
ence of  trousers  and  six  winters.  Here  nurse  would  choose 
a  shady  seat,  bury  her  nose  in  a  novelette,  and  with  her  toe 
against  the  wheel  of  the  perambulator,  impart  to  the  sleep- 
ing Alice  the  sensation  of  reposing  on  the  topmost  bough 
of  a  wind-shaken  tree.  Bernard  was  thus  left  to  his  own 
resources  and  the  insipid  company  of  Eugene.  On  one  of 


8  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

these  mornings  Hektor's  operations  had  brought  him  into  the 
vicinity  and  Bernard  had  conquered  his  shyness  sufficiently 
to  go  up  to  the  young  general  and  say: 

"  Can  I  play  with  you?  " 

And  while  a  ruddy  glow  spread  over  his  countenance,  the 
hero  had  looked  him  over  slowly  and  said : 

"  All  right.     Fall  in." 

That  evening  the  Doctor  had  come  up  to  the  nursery  to 
see  his  children,  and  Bernard  had  poured  out  a  rapturous 
tale  of  his  doings.  His  father  listened  impatiently  and  then 
asked: 

"Who  is  this  Hektor?" 

Bernard  had  no  more  definite  information,  but  nurse  had 
said  he  was  one  of  them  O'Flaherties  of  Baggot  Street ;  and 
the  Doctor's  brows  had  contracted,  and  he  had  said  that 
Bernard  must  on  no  account  play  with  Hektor  again. 

"Why,  daddy?" 

"  Because  he's  not  a  nice  boy." 

"  Sure  he's  awfully  nice." 

"  Don't  say  '  sure.'  You're  not  to  play  with  him  because 
I  tell  you  so,  and  that's  all  about  it." 

Then,  with  a  parting  injunction  to  nurse  to  see  that  his 
wishes  were  carried  out,  he  kissed  his  son  hurriedly  and  left 
the  room. 

For  a  few  days  Bernard  had  obeyed  his  parent's  behest, 
but  this  was  mainly  due  to  his  nurse's  vigilance.  In  those 
youthful  days  he  did  not  appreciate  the  difference  between 
Stephen's  Green  and  Upper  Baggot  Street,  and  his  whole 
soul  revolted  against  the  tyranny  which  robbed  him  of  the 
only  thing  in  life  which  at  the  moment  seemed  worth  having. 
At  last,  realizing  one  day  that  Eugene  and  the  perambulator 
would  be  a  severe  encumbrance  to  nurse's  pursuit,  he  seized 
a  favourable  moment  to  slip  from  her  side,  and  dodging 
through  a  shrubbery,  rushed  off  to  find  the  gang. 

Hektor  received  him  coldly,  asking  why  he  had  stayed 
away  so  long.  Bernard  explained  that  his  nurse  had  kept 
him. 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  9 

"  Well,  if  you're  afraid  of  your  nurse  you  needn't  come 
here,"  said  Hektor,  whereat  the  Army  laughed  loudly. 

"Silence!"  bellowed  the  general.  "Remember  you're 
on  parade." 

The  warriors  smothered  their  laughter  and  wiped  out  their 
smiles,  while  Bernard  explained  that  he  had  just  run  away 
from  nurse  in  defiance  of  all  orders.  He  could  see  that  he 
rose  considerably  in  Hektor's  estimation  at  this  and  finally 
the  latter  bade  him  fall  in  with  the  rest. 

"  Number!  "  said  Hektor. 

The  Army  proceeded  to  do  so.  Number  one  was  a  rather 
coarse  boy  called  Har'ld,  who  lived  in  Cuffe  Street.  He 
was  the  second  in  command,  and  would  have  been  a  bully  if 
Hektor  had  not  kept  him  well  in  hand.  Number  two  was 
Hektor's  younger  brother  Michael.  He  ought  really  to  have 
been  in  Har'ld's  place,  but  Hektor,  rather  than  suspect  him- 
self of  nepotism,  relegated  him  to  the  ranks.  Number  three 
was  another  Baggot  Street  boy  called  Hugh.  Number  four 
was  Har'ld's  brother  Willy,  a  dirty  little  youngster  with  a 
perpetually  dripping  nose.  The  rest  of  the  Army,  acting 
as  the  enemy  for  the  time  being,  was  waiting  in  an  adjacent 
shelter  intending  to  hold  it  to  the  death  against  Hektor's  at- 
tack, which  was  to  be  delivered  as  soon  as  the  departure  of 
a  keeper  in  the  vicinity  rendered  it  possible.  Meanwhile 
Hektor  divided  his  forces  into  three  parties.  Hugh  and 
Willy  were  to  attack  the  right  flank;  Har'ld  and  Bernard 
were  to  deliver  a  frontal  attack;  while  Hektor  and  Michael 
were  in  reserve,  ready  to  fling  themselves  into  action  when 
needed  to  push  home  a  victory  or  stave  off  defeat. 

The  uniformed  figure  of  law  and  order  having  taken  its 
departure,  the  battle  began.  Bernard,  rushing  blindly  into 
action,  was  at  grips  with  a  wiry  little  newsboy,  when  he  felt 
himself  drawn  out  of  the  fight  from  the  rear.  Nurse  had 
come  up,  taken  him  by  the  slack  of  the  pants,  and  hauled 
him  ingloriously  home. 

Words  cannot  describe  the  pain  and  anger  of  Dr.  Lascelles 
on  learning  of  the  plebeian  tastes  of  his  son.  "  Your  con- 


io  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

duct,"  he  explained,  "  has  been  unworthy  of  a  gentleman's 
son,"  and  hastened  to  apply  with  a  strap  the  recognized  cure 
for  such  behaviour. 

After  this  incident  the  children  were  taken  to  the  Leinster 
Lawn  for  their  recreation,  so  the  young  mutineer  saw  noth- 
ing of  his  hero  for  some  months.  Then  nurse  was  taken  ill 
and  had  to  return  to  her  home  in  the  country,  and  her  place 
was  taken  by  a  much  less  conscientious  person  who  openly 
ignored  the  Doctor's  instructions  and  brought  the  children 
once  again  to  Stephen's  Green,  where  henceforward  Bernard 
played  to  his  heart's  content  with  Hektor  and  his  followers; 
a  happy  state  of  things  which  lasted  until  the  flowing  tide  of 
social  and  pecuniary  prosperity  carried  his  father  to  Merrion 
Square,  where  the  children  were  more  desirable  if  less  orig- 
inal. 

5 

A  tendency  to  play  the  politician  which  early  manifested 
itself  in  Bernard,  was  a  symptom  of  abnormality  that  would 
have  alarmed  his  father  had  he  not  been  too  busy  diagnosing 
other  people's  complaints  to  notice  it. 

After  an  abortive  attempt  to  organize  the  inhabitants  of 
the  nursery  into  a  monarchical  state  (abortive  because  it  re- 
quired too  continuous  a  use  of  make-believe,  which  Bernard 
always  detested)  he  applied  his  statecraft  to  the  construction 
of  toy  commonwealths.  The  nursery  was  well  stocked  with 
toys  of  the  usual  kind:  dolls,  tea-sets,  soldiers,  animals,  rail- 
ways, bricks,  and  odds  and  ends.  Each  child  had  its  share 
of  these,  and  Bernard  with  a  piece  of  chalk  divided  the 
nursery  table  into  three  territories  for  their  occupation. 
This  done  he  tried  to  institute  wars  between  the  different 
states,  but  Alice  was  too  young  and  Eugene  too  unenterpris- 
ing to  make  the  game  a  success,  and  eventually  it  was  aban- 
doned for  another  scheme  by  which  all  toys  and  owners 
were  united  under  his  own  energetic  rule  into  one  vast  city 
state. 

First  the  railway  line  was  laid,  and  each  child  received 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  11 

ground  on  which  to  build  a  station.  Then  battered  bricks 
eked  out  with  cardboard  boxes  formed  the  framework  of  a 
wonderful  metropolis.  Stables,  cottages,  shops  and  temples 
lined  its  thoroughfares,  which  were  paraded  by  soldiers, 
cows,  lions  and  chessmen.  The  railway  ran  under  tunnels 
made  out  of  drapers'  boxes,  on  the  roof  of  one  of  which  a 
shepherd  tended  his  sheep,  while  on  another  Noah  and  his 
family,  a  brass  band,  and  a  cat  with  her  kittens  formed  har- 
monious groups.  Proportion  was  flouted.  A  fox  terrier 
filled  a  whole  carriage  of.  the  train,  while  a  family  of  china 
elephants  reposed  comfortably  in  the  tender.  And  as  for 
the  train  it  visited  strange  places  in  its  journey,  travelling 
frequently  from  Dublin,  via  New  York  or  Timbuctoo,  to 
Howth. 

The  principal  occupations  of  the  citizens  were  travelling, 
wolf  hunting,  and  courts  martial.  One  day  the  train  would 
buzz  .round  and  round  transferring  the  population  of  New 
York  to  Howth;  the  next  all  commercial  activity  would 
come  to  a  standstill  while  the  wolves  from  the  neighbouring 
woods  were  repulsed  in  a  marauding  raid  on  the  suburbs 
with  horse,  foot  and  artillery.  A  third  day  would  see  a 
reign  of  terror  in  full  swing,  Noah,  chessmen  and  visitors 
from  Japan  being  tried  in  batches  and  blown  from  the  can- 
non's mouth.  (All  offences  were  thus  treated,  from  treason 
to  overcrowding  on  the  railway.) 

There  were  wars  too,  based  on  no  quarrel  and  fought  with 
no  strategy,  in  which  the  soldiery  on  each  side  stood  up  to 
each  other  like  Frederick's  Prussians  while  marbles  mowed 
them  down,  the  prize  of  victory  being  a  triumphal  march 
through  the  streets  of  the  capital. 

Time  and  again  the  whole  mighty  Babylon  was  swept 
away  by  the  barbarian  hand  of  nurse,  only  to  rise  again  on 
its  ruins  as  glorious  as  ever.  Thus  hour  after  hour  through 
the  seemingly  endless  days  of  childhood  they  played,  each 
suiting  the  game  to  his  own  tastes.  For  Alice  liked  best  to 
gather  her  citizens  round  a  table  and  entertain  them  to  a 
banquet,  and  Eugene  loved  to  parade  his  soldiers  and  arrange 


12  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

aesthetic  groups  on  the  station  platform  and  then  sit  and 
gaze  at  them,  while  Bernard  was  for  ever  and  ever  dissatis- 
fied, and  built  and  destroyed,  and  reconstructed,  and  de- 
stroyed again,  and  in  the  intervals  dreamed  great  projects 
which  he  never  found  himself  able  to  accomplish. 

Dissatisfaction  often  caused  him  to  give  up  play  alto- 
gether, much  to  the  disappointment  of  the  others,  whose 
amusements  became  chaotic  without  him,  and  plunge  into 
the  world  of  books.  There  were  beautiful  illustrated  edi- 
tions of  Cinderella  and  Bluebeard  in  the  nursery,  but  his 
favourites  were  a  big  History  of  England,  British  Battles, 
and  a  bound  volume  of  the  Navy  and  Army  Illustrated. 
From  these  he  drew  much  of  the  inspiration  of  his  games, 
and  back  to  them  he  went  after  his  recurring  failures. 
There  was  also  a  big  Shakespeare,  plenteously  illustrated, 
which  he  found  very  hard  to  understand,  though  he  man- 
aged to  appreciate  the  story  of  many  of  the  pictures  by  re- 
ferring to  the  text  beside.  Passages  and  characters  here 
and  there  had  a  strange  fascination  for  him.  MacDuff  was 
his  favourite  character,  and  next  to  him  came  Sampson  and 
Gregory.  Indeed  their  scene  was  the  only  part  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet  that  held  any  interest  for  him.  He  loved  the 
line  "  No  sir.  I  do  not  bite  my  thumb  at  you,  sir.  But  I 
bite  my  thumb,  sir,"  and  (but  this  was  a  little  later)  the 
sonorous  ring  of  some  of  the  speeches  in  the  tragedies  pleased 
him  long  before  they  conveyed  any  meaning. 

In  those  days  the  artist  in  him  was  concerned  mainly  with 
form.  The  solid  shapes  of  things  gave  him  pleasure.  He 
liked  the  firm  stand  of  a  toy  regiment  of  Life  Guards,  and 
the  small  broad  wheels  of  railway  trucks,  and  the  straight 
symmetry  of  the  tracks ;  and  he  would  stand  for  hours  watch- 
ing a  steam-roller  at  work.  The  smell  of  furniture  vans 
and  of  certain  stone  bricks  that  formed  a  temple  in  Babylon 
were  his  only  exotics. 

6 

Mr.  Christopher  Reilly  kept  his  promise  to  Doctor  Las- 
celles.  The  christening  mug  was  orthodox  and  very  expen- 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  13 

sive,  and  each  of  Bernard's  birthdays  brought  a  present  over 
from  America.  First  it  was  a  rattle,  a  wonderful  silver 
rattle,  with  melodious  little  bells  attached.  Next  year  came 
a  cow,  a  most  life-like  animal,  with  horns  of  cow-horn,  and 
a  realistic  "  moo."  The  third  year  brought  a  huge  wooden 
railway  train  with  doors  and  windows  that  opened  and  shut. 
After  that  came  soldiers  and  cannons,  and  clockwork  trains, 
and  a  magic  lantern  which  he  .was  not  allowed  to  use,  for 
fear  of  accidents,  and  which  eventually  rusted  away  from 
neglect.  For  his  eighth  birthday  ...  but  let  us  turn  to 
his  mother's  letter  of  thanks. 

My  Dear  Chris, 

I'm  so  glad  to  hear  that  you  are  quite  well  and  getting  on 
so  splendidly.  Why  don't  you  hurry  up  and  get  married? 
Are  the  American  girls  not  so  charming  as  we  are  told? 

Why  on  earth  did  you  send  Bernard  that  Child's  History 
of  Ireland?  You  might  have  known  what  would  happen. 
Eugene  was  perfectly  furious,  he  flung  it  straight  into  the 
fire  and  Bernard  was  crying  for  hours  after.  The  whole 
birthday  was  spoilt.  Now  please  don't  think  that  I  mind 
myself,  because  I  don't.  I  should  like  Bernard  to  be  a  pa- 
triotic Irishman  but  his  father  simply  won't  have  it  and  it's 
impossible  as  you  know  for  me  to  have  any  say.  Besides 
I'm  not  going  to  have  politics  spoiling  the  happiness  of  my 
home. 

I  haven't  much  news.  Old  Dr.  Wilton  is  dead.  The 
children  had  chicken  pox  but  are  well  over  it.  Eugene  gave 
me  a  Christmas  present  of  a  new  drawing-room  suite,  but 
like  most  of  his  presents  it's  for  himself  as  much  as  for  me, 
and  it's  not  as  if  I  hadn't  hinted  enough  for  a  necklace. 

When  are  you  coming  over  to  Dublin  again?  I'm  long- 
ing to  see  you,  and  you'll  be  delighted  with  your  godson, 
he's  such  a  pretty  child. 

Try  and  come  soon. 

With  much  love  from 

Your  loving  sister, 

ALICE, 


i4  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Her  brother's  reply  was  brief. 

/  shall  be  in  Dublin  on  business,  he  wrote,  next  month, 
and  I'll  take  a  short  holiday  there  as  well.  I  am  sending 
Bernard  another  present  to  replace  that  which  his  father 
did  in  beastly  rage  destroy. 

I  see  old  England's  on  the  warpath  again  for  Justice  and 
Mammon,  so  I  suppose  His  Majesty  is  in  fine  imperial  fettle. 
Don't  heed  him.  The  Boers  are  a  small  people  standing  up 
for  their  rights  against  a  bully,  and  that's  all  there's  to  it. 

Thine, 

CHRIS. 

Mrs.  Lascelles  ran  upstairs  to  the  nursery  with  this  letter 
and  its  accompanying  parcel.  The  children  deserted  Baby- 
lon and  rushed  to  her  arms  in  a  body. 

"  A  present  from  Uncle  Christopher,"  she  said,  giving 
the  parcel  to  Bernard.  "  He's  coming  to  see  us  soon. 
Won't  that  be  nice?" 

"  Oh,  mummy,  what's  he  like?  " 

"  Like  his  photograph,  of  course." 

"  Y'es,  but  I  mean  how  big  is  he,  and  how  does  he  talk." 

"  Such  a  boy!  He's  tall,  and  you'll  hear  him  talk  when 
he  comes." 

"  Mummy,  come  and  see  my  new  invention." 

"  I  haven't  time,  darling.     Some  other  day." 

Bernard  looked  dismayed. 

"  Just  for  a  minute,  mummy,"  he  pleaded. 

He  drew  her  over  to  the  city  and  tried  rapidly  to  impress 
her  with  some  wonderful  piece  of  railway  engineering.  She 
listened  absently  with  an  occasional  insincere  "  Yes,"  or 
"  Really,"  her  glazed  eyes  showing  that  her  thoughts  were 
elsewhere  —  in  Chatham  Street  with  the  butcher  and  grocer 
most  likely.  Bernard,  disappointed,  let  her  go  without  com- 
pleting his  lecture. 

"  Mummy  never  seems  to  listen  to  us,"  he  complained 
when  she  had  gone. 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  15 

"Why  don't  you  open  your  parcel?"  asked  Eugene,  im- 
patiently. 

7 

"  I  see  that  we  are  about  to  fight  the  Boers,"  said  Dr. 
Lascelles  one  day,  unfolding  a  large  map  of  South  Africa  at 
the  dinner  table. 

"  How  terrible!  "  said  his  wife. 

"  Serve  them  right,"  answered  the  Doctor.  "  They've 
been  asking  for  trouble  this  long  time,  and  by  God  they'll 
have  it." 

Mrs.  Lascelles  remembered  her  brother's  letter. 

"  It's  a  shame  for  a  big  country  to  be  attacking  a  little 
one,"  she  said. 

"  Do  you  think  England's  going  to  let  herself  be  bullied 
by  a  pack  of  Dutch  farmers?  " 

"  I  don't  think  anything.  I  only  know  the  Boers  are 
standing  up  for  their  rights." 

"  Rights!  "  scoffed  the  Doctor.  "  Precious  lot  you  know 
about  rights.  These  Boers  are  a  truculent  narrow-minded 
lot  of  money-grubbing  psalm-singing  bigots." 

Mrs.  Lascelles  would  sacrifice  anything  for  peace. 

"  Perhaps  you're  right,  dear,"  she  admitted. 

"  There's  no  '  perhaps '  about  it,"  rejoined  her  husband 
irritably.  "  Of  course  I'm  right."  Doctor  Lascelles  had 
nothing  but  scorn  for  his  wife's  belief  in  the  infallibility  of 
the  Pope,  but  he  had  not  the  slightest  doubt  of  his  own. 

"  Very  well,  dear,"  said  his  pusillanimous  wife  with  a 
sigh,  mentally  comparing  her  husband's  hectoring  behaviour 
with  Chris's  considerate  statement  of  a  case.  The  Doctor 
went  on  studying  his  map. 

War  means  the  slaughter  of  myriads  of  men,  the  destruc- 
tion of  homes,  the  impoverishment  of  masses;  in  its  train 
come  crime,  misery  and  disease;  it  is  the  root  of  hatred  and 
revenge,  it  is  the  plague  and  despair  of  the  world.  What 
manner  of  man  then  is  this  who  can  look  forward  with  com- 
placency —  nay,  with  eagerness  —  to  the  loosing  of  all  these 


16  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

horrors  with  his  connivance  and  at  his  expense  upon  a  distant 
people, —  a  small  people  of  whose  existence  he  but  recently 
became  aware  and  whose  destruction  can  in  no  wise  improve 
his  happiness?  Let  his  friends  speak  for  him:  they  would 
praise  him  highly;  call  him  generous,  kind-hearted,  hos- 
pitable; a  good  husband  and  father;  a  man  of  culture  and 
taste;  an  excellent  companion  and  a  sayer  of  good  things; 
a  judge  of  wine  and  cigars  too;  a  gentleman.  They  are 
not  far  wrong  either.  He  is  beyond  doubt  a  hard-working 
capable  physician,  popular  wherever  he  goes,  and  a  social 
success.  He  has  indeed  all  the  attractive  virtues ;  and  if  he 
is  selfish,  overbearing  and  tyrannical  it  is  known  only  to  his 
family;  if  he  is  a  snob  it  is  noticeable  only  to  his  social  in- 
"feriors;  and  if  he  is  narrow-minded  and  hypocritical  it  is 
known  only  to  God. 

8 

Bernard  impatiently  waited  for  his  nurse  to  finish  brush- 
ing his  hair.  It  was  an  annoying  process  at  the  best  of 
times,  for  at  the  end  of  every  stroke  of  the  brush  she  brought 
the  bristles  down  on  to  his  ears  or  some  other  sensitive  part  ; 
but  now  it  was  intolerable,  for  Uncle  Christopher  had  come 
from  America  and  was  waiting  below  in  the  drawing-room 
to  see  him.  The  operation  being  at  last  concluded  to  nurse's 
satisfaction  he  rushed  downstairs  to  the  drawing-room,  but 
shyness  overcoming  him  at  the  door,  he  entered  with  com- 
mendable decorum. 

A  tall  gentleman  was  talking  to  Mrs.  Lascelles  beside  the 
fireplace.  He  looked  over  at  Bernard's  entrance  and  said: 

"Hello!     Is  this  Bernard?" 

"  This  is  your  godson,"  said  Mrs.  Lascelles,  beaming  on 
them  both.  Bernard  came  nearer. 

"  Dp  you  remember  me  at  all?  "  said  Uncle  Christopher, 
to  which  Bernard  solemnly  answered  "  No." 

"  That's  strange,"  said  Uncle  Christopher,  "  because  it's 
barely  eight  years  since  we  parted." 

"How  absurd  you  are,  Chris,"  giggled  Mrs.  Lascelles, 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  17 

and    Bernard,    forgetting    his    shyness,    laughed    outright. 

"  I  was  only  a  baby"  then,"  he  said. 

"  May  I  take  Bernard  out  to  tea?  "  inquired  Uncle  Chris- 
topher, and,  on  his  sister's  assenting,  "  Will  you  come  along 
to  Mitchells  with  me  ?  "  he  asked  Bernard. 

Bernard  had  no  objection  to  offer  and  inside  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  they  were  seated  at  a  table  laden  with  good  things. 

"Have  an  eclair?"  said  Uncle  Christopher,  holding  a 
plate  towards  his  nephew.  Bernard,  remembering  previous 
teas  when  his  father  had  been  the  host,  asked : 

"  Aren't  they  unwholesome  ?  " 

"  Very,"  said  his  uncle  with  his  eyes  twinkling.  "  Take 
two." 

For  a  time  there  was  silence  while  Bernard  made  devastat- 
ing raids  on  the  gorgeous  contents  of  several  plates.  After- 
wards by  sympathetic  questioning  the  man  set  the  child  suffi- 
ciently at  his  ease  to  let  him  talk  spontaneously,  and  Chris- 
topher was  delighted  with  the  intelligence  of  his  nephew 
and  the  clear  voice  and  accent  in  which  he  spoke.  En- 
thusiastically Bernard  told  him  of  his  wars  and  cities,  and 
Christopher  casting  aside  all  the  difference  of  age  between 
them  joined  with  him  in  an  eager  conversation.  The  dreams 
and  limitations  of  his  own  childhood  came  back  to  his  mem- 
ory, and  he  became  a  child  again  comparing  notes  with  an- 
other child.  Bernard  on  his  side  was  gloriously  astonished 
to  find  in  his  uncle  a  kindred  spirit.  Nobody  had  ever  lis- 
tened to  him  in  this  way  before.  When  he  tried  to  interest 
his  father  in  something  that  was  all  the  world  to  him  it  was 
"  Yes,  yes  "  impatiently,  and  "  I  must  be  off,  laddie.  I'm 
busy."  How  he  hated  that  word  "  busy,"  the  spoiler  of  a 
thousand  joys.  Why  were  grown  ups  always  busy?  Why 
wasn't  his  uncle  busy? 

"  What  does  being  busy  mean  ?  "  he  asked  suddenly. 

"  It  means  having  something  unpleasant  to  do.  And  that 
reminds  me,  I'm  busy  this  evening,  so  I'll  leave  you* home 
at  once." 

"  But  you'll  come  and  see  my  toys  tomorrow,  won't  you  ?  " 


1 8  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Bernard  inquired  anxiously.  His  uncle  promised  to  do  so, 
and  the  pair  parted  company  at  Dr.  Lascelles'  hall  door,  each 
mightily  pleased  with  the  other. 

Home  again,  Bernard  felt  a  kind  of  chill  come  over  him. 
This  was  the  land  of  absent-minded  "  Yes,  yes,"  and  "  I'm 
busy,  laddie."  His  thoughts  went  back  down  the  street 
after  his  uncle,  and  he  resolved  to  confide  in  him  many 
dreams  and  fancies  such  as  he  had  never  wanted  to  divulge 
before.  Slowly  he  ascended  to  the  nursery,  and  blinking 
after  the  darkness  of  the  stairway  entered  the  gas-lit  room. 
Its  familiarity  struck  oppressively  to  his  heart.  Eugene  and 
Alice  —  dull  homely  figures  in  their  overalls  —  called  him 
joyfully  in  their  everyday  voices  to  come  and  join  in  their 
game,  but  he  shook  his  head  and  retired  moodily  to  a  chair 
apart. 

"  Sometimes,"  Eugene  remarked  to  Alice,  "  Barnie  goes 
on  like  a  grown  up." 

Bye  and  bye  Bernard  fetched  the  Army  and  Navy  Illus- 
trated from  a  shelf  and  immersed  himself  in  it.  Eugene  and 
Alice  weary  of  play  began  to  make  remarks. 

"Granny!"  said  Eugene,  and  Alice  tittered.  Bernard 
pretended  not  to  hear. 

"  Granny!  "  repeated  Eugene,  giving  the  book  a  shove  by 
way  of  emphasis. 

"  Shut  up !  "  snapped  Bernard. 

"  Temper  cat,"  said  little  Alice. 

Something  snapped  inside  Bernard's  head.  He  was  seized 
with  a  violent  desire  to  wring  Alice's  neck,  but  knew  bet- 
ter than  to  touch  her,  for  punishment  of  the  direst  kind 
always  visited  any  assault  on  his  sister.  "  The  boy  who 
would  strike  a  girl  is  a  coward,"  was  his  father's  dogma,  the 
natural  result  being  that  since  Alice  was  an  irritating  little 
tyrant  both  boys  heartily  detested  her.  So  it  was  on  Eu- 
gene's head  that  the  blow  fell.  The  corner  of  the  chronicle 
of  Britain's  glories  drew  blood  from  his  pudgy  nose  and  he 
fled  to  nurse  howling.  Instantly  the  culprit  was  arrested 
and  brought  to  justice  before  the  bar  of  the  dinner  table. 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  19 

Sullenly  determined  that  his  brother,  chief  witness  standing 
by  in  all  the  glory  of  injured  innocence,  should  not  have  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  him  punished,  he  began  by  stubbornly 
denying  his  crime:  a  disastrous  course.  Such  an  attitude 
could  not  long  be  maintained  in  the  face  of  systematic  brow- 
beating and  eventually  he  was  forced  to  admit  the  truth. 

"  To  think  that  my  son  could  be  a  liar!  "  said  Dr.  Las- 
celles  solemnly.  "  A  liar!  "  he  repeated.  "  Don't  you  know 
that  the  most  despicable  of  all  faults  is  dishonesty,  and  hon- 
esty the  first  of  all  virtues.  Think  how  splendid  it  would 
be  to  look  back  on  a  long  life  and  say  '  I  never  told  a  lie.' 
You  can  never  say  that  now." 

Bernard  hung  his  head  and  traced  the  outlines  of  the 
pattern  of  the  carpet  with  his  toe. 

"  And  to  think  that  you  should  deliberately  strike  your 
little  brother  so  as  to  make  him  bleed.  Your  behaviour 
today  has  been  that  of  a  liar,  a  bully  and  a  coward.  Go 
away.  I'm  ashamed  of  you." 

But  in  spite  of  his  crimes  his  mother  came  up  to  his  bed- 
side and  put  her  arms  round  him  and  kissed  him. 

So  ended  an  eventful  day,  eventful  enough  even  as  here 
related  with  perhaps  the  most  important  event  left  out. 
For  as  his  father  delivered  his  homologue  upon  truth  Ber- 
nard had  looked  once  into  his  eyes,  and  in  that  look  doubt 
for  the  first  time  entered  his  soul.  The  age  of  acceptance 
was  over. 

9 

Uncle  Christopher  came  several  times  to  the  nursery  dur- 
ing the  remainder  of  his  stay  in  Dublin.  Mrs.  Lascelles 
smiled  indulgently  on  him,  calling  him  "  a  great  child,"  and 
pitying  this  weakness  in  an  otherwise  sensible  nature.  Ber- 
nard liked  to  see  him  standing  watching  their  play  (he  was 
one  of  those  men  who  never  sit  down),  his  hands  in  his 
trousers'  pockets,  an  amber-stemmed  pipe  between  his  fine 
white  teeth,  making  now  and  then  in  his  pleasant  voice  some 
illuminating  suggestion  on  engineering  or  politics.  Alice 


20  THE  WASTED  ISLAND   - 

too  confided  to  Bernard  that  she  loved  Uncle  Chris  "  be- 
cause he  had  such  twinkly  eyes." 

Babylon  improved  marvellously  between  his  suggestions 
and  his  gifts.  The  children,  it  should  be  mentioned,  were 
well  brought  up,  having  a  code  one  of  whose  clauses  for- 
bade asking  for  presents.  Toys,  of  course,  always  came  to 
them  in  a  flood  at  Christmas  time  or  on  their  birthdays,  but 
they  were  always  of  father's  or  mother's  choice,  and  conse- 
quently not  always  satisfying.  Uncle  Chris  appreciated  their 
needs  better  and  commenced  by  remedying  the  shortage  of 
building  materials.  Babylon  immediately  solved  her  hous- 
ing problem  and  shook  off  a  great  slumland  of  cardboard. 

"  What  do  you  think  you  need  most  now?  "  he  asked  an- 
other day. 

"  It's  a  pity  we  haven't  more  straight  tracks,"  said  Ber- 
nard. "  It's  not  very  real  to  have  the  train  always  on  a 
curve.  Oh,  I'm  not  hinting,  you  know,"  he  added  with  a 
sudden  blush  as  he  remembered  the  code. 

"  I'd  noticed  that  myself,  old  man,"  and  Christopher  pro- 
duced a  parcel. 

One  day  he  arrived  to  find  a  battle  in  progress  between  the 
armies 'of  Eugene  and  Bernard. 

"Go  it,  Ireland!"  said  Bernard  triumphantly  as  a  can- 
non ball  ploughed  a  lane  through  Eugene's  cavalry. 

"  Why  do  you  call  yourselves  Irish  and  English  ?  "  asked 
Christopher,  surprised  to  hear  the  elements  of  treason  com- 
ing from  his  father's  son. 

"  I  know  it's  funny,"  replied  Bernard,  "  because  they're 
both  the  same,  aren't  they?  But,  you  see,  when  we  used  to 
be  French  and  English  neither  of  us  wanted  to  be  the 
enemy.  So  now  Eugene  is  the  English  because  they  have 
the  biggest  city  in  the  world,  but  I'd  rather  be  Ireland  be- 
cause we  live  there  you  know." 

"  An  excellent  reason  too,"  said  Uncle  Christopher. 

"  Do  you  notice,"  said  Bernard  afterwards  to  Eugene, 
"  Uncle  Christ  sometimes  says  things  in  a  queer  way  as  i*  he 
meant  something  else?  " 


A  GENTLEMAN'S  SON  21 

"  You're  always  thinking  queer  things,"  was  all  Eugene's 
reply. 

Soon  after  that  Uncle  Christopher  went  away,  and  he  left 
behind  him  as  a  last  present  for  Bernard  a  book  in  a  grey 
blue  cover  called  Cuchulain  of  Muirthemne.  "  Kewkelayn 
of  Murthem,"  Bernard  pronounced  it,  and  he  read  it  fasci- 
nated, and  as  soon  as  he  had  finished  it  re-read  it,  and  re- 
read it  again,  till  he  came  to  know  it  almost  by  heart.  The 
great  stand  up  fights  between  champions  and  the  clash  of 
armies  in  battle  delighted  him  immensely,  but  the  wonder- 
ful descriptions  of  costumes  appealed  to  him  almost  more 
keenly.  He  used  to  try  and  imagine  himself  clad  in  a  shin- 
ing white  shirt  striped  with  purple  down  the  sides,  a  gold 
shield  on  his  back  with  a  border  of  silver  and  edge  of  white 
bronze  as  sharp  as  a  knife,  a  great  spear  in  his  hand,  and  a 
mighty  two  edged  sword  with  silver  hilt  at  his  jewelled  belt. 

But  most  of  all,  as  in  after  days  he  loved  the  catalogue  of 
the  ships  in  Homer,  he  loved  the  catalogue  of  the  troops  on 
the  eve  of  a  battle.  And  one  passage  always  thrilled  him 
tremendously  when  he  read  it.  This  was  where  MacRoth 
describing  to  Fergus  the  arrival  of  the  Ulstermen  on  the 
field  of  Ilgaireth,  tells  at  last  of  a  downhearted  troop  of 
leaderless  men,  to  which  Fergus  replies:  "  I  know  them 
well,  and  it  is  well  for  those  on  whose  side  they  are,  and  it 
is  a  pity  for  those  they  are  against,  for  they  are  Cuchulain's 
men  from  Muirthemne." 

Up  till  then  his  favourite  heroes  had  been  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  Nelson,  Wellington  and  Lord  Roberts,  but  now 
Cuchulain  and  Conal  and  Fergus  and  the  rest  displaced  them 
entirely.  They  were  more  heroic,  more  lovable,  and  in- 
finitely more  real.  He  longed  now  to  talk  to  Uncle  Chris 
about  his  treasure  and  to  ask  his  explanation  of  the  strange 
discrepancy  with  accepted  history  which  it  involved.  But 
Uncle  Christopher  was  gone  away. 


CHAPTER  II 

GLENCOOLE 

I 

A  SOLITARY  cyclist  was  wheeling  his  machine  up  a 
narrow  and  uneven  road  winding  through  the  Dublin 
mountains.  It  was  a  hot  summer  day  and  the  cyclist's 
clothes  were  covered  with  dust  and  his  brow  with  sweat. 
For  a  mile  he  plodded  on  in  grim  determination,  till  at 
length  he  reached  the  highest  point  of  the  track  —  it  was 
little  more  —  and  looked  down  into  the  valley  beyond.  It 
was  a  beautiful  scene  that  met  his  gaze ;  a  verdant  glen  well 
wooded  with  beech  and  pine  and  mountain  ash,  and  watered 
by  a  little  stream  that  splashed  and  sparkled  down  the  centre. 
A  wisp  of  lazy  smoke  and  a  splash  of  white  proclaimed  the 
presence  of  an  occasional  cottage,  and  far  below  the  road 
could  be  seen  to  cross  the  tiny  rivulet  by  a  totally  dispro- 
portionate bridge.  The  cyclist  stood  admiring  the  view  for 
some  minutes,  then  sat  down  by  the  roadside  and  lit  a 
cigarette.  When  it  was  finished,  he  mounted  his  bicycle 
and  free-wheeled  down  the  slope  into  the  glen.  Reaching 
the  bottom  he  again  dismounted  to  climb  the  further  slope, 
and  just  before  reaching  the  gap  that  led  out  of  the  glen 
stopped  at  the  garden  gate  of  a  two  storied  cottage.  This 
he  opened,  and  advancing  up -a  short  walk,  rapped  with  his 
fingers  on  the  sun-blistered  green-painted  door.  He  heard 
a  heavy  step  on  the  flags  within  and  the  door  was  opened 
by  a  majestic  looking  man,  well-dressed,  with  longish  but 
well-groomed  white  hair,  and  neatly  trimmed  beard.  He 
stood  for  a  moment  in  the  doorway,  looking  inquiringly  at 
the  cyclist. 

"  Don't  you  recognize  me,  Ward  ?  "  said  the  latter. 
22 


GLENCOOLE  23 

"Well,  if  it's  not  Chris  Reilly!"  cried  the  white  haired 
man  in  a  hearty  voice.  The  voice  was  strangely  inconsistent 
with  the  hair,  which,  one  suspected,  was  prematurely  white. 

Christopher  looking  at  him  could  see  that  this  was  a  young 
man  made  old;  that  it  was  suffering  that  had  furrowed  his 
brow  and  sorrow  that  had  sunk  his  eyes  so  deep  in  their 
sockets. 

"  I'm  glad  you  haven't  forgotten  me,"  he  said.  "  It  must 
be  twenty  years  since  I  saw  you  last." 

"  You  were  only  a  lad  then,"  replied  the  other,  "  but 
those  twenty  years  haven't  changed  you  as  much  as  they've 
changed  me.  .  .  .  Come  inside.  You  can  leave  your  bicycle 
against  the  wall  there." 

Christopher  followed  him  into  a  small  red-flagged  hall 
from  which  a  flight  of  plain  deal  stairs  led  to  the  upper 
storey.  Ward  put  his  head  through  a  doorway  on  the  left 
and  told  some  one  to  prepare  tea,  and  then  motioned  his 
guest  to  enter  the  room  opposite.  Christopher  did  so,  and 
almost  gave  vent  to  an  exclamation  of  surprise  so  different 
was  the  furnishing  of  the  room  from  what  the  exterior  of  the 
cottage  would  lead  one  to  expect.  As  for  the  room  itself 
it  was  similar  to  all  of  its  kind:  with  two  small  windows 
looking  out  into  the  shrubbery  in  front  of  the  house,  and 
a  big  open  hearth,  filled  now  with  golden-flowered  furze 
branches.  But  the  furniture  was  of  mahogany;  there  were 
two  comfortable  arm-chairs;  and  a  cottage-piano  stood  in  a 
corner.  Moreover  the  walls  on  three  sides  of  the  room  were 
lined  with  book-cases,  and  even  a  hurried  glance  would  show 
that  their  contents  were  the  collection  of  a  true  book-lover. 
There  were  no  pictures  in  the  room  save  for  a  coloured  re- 
production of  the  Sistine  Madonna  over  the  mantelpiece  and 
a  few  photographs  here  and  there. 

"  Yes.  Twenty  years.  Twenty  mortal  years,"  said  Ward 
pensively  as  they  sat  down.  He  remained  silent  a  few  mo- 
ments meditating. 

Christopher,  watching  him,  allowed  his  mind  to  travel 
back  to  the  last  occasion  on  which  he  had  seen  him.  Be- 


24  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

fore  his  mind's  eye  passed  a  vision  of  an  attic  in  London, 
in  which  five  men,  including  himself,  a  boy  of  seventeen, 
and  Ward,  a  young  man  of  twenty-three,  were  preparing 
to  sit  down  to  a  meal.  In  imagination  he  felt  again  the 
tense  anticipatory  excitement  of  the  moment,  for  these  men 
were  going  from  that  meal  to  certain  death.  All  of  those 
present  seemed  to  be  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  affected  by 
the  imminence  of  the  crisis  except  the  leader,  a  quiet  de- 
termined-looking man  with  iron-grey  hair  and  beard,  who 
appeared  to  have  no  care  in  the  world  except  the  proper 
preparation  of  the  supper.  As  the  party  was  about  to  sit 
down  this  man  suddenly  exclaimed:  "  By  Jove,  we  haven't 
enough  butter.  That  won't  do  at  all.  A  death-feast  with- 
out butter  would  be  unthinkable.  .  .  .  Chris,  like  a  good 
fellow  run  down  the  street  for  some  butter."  And  he  saw 
himself  leave  the  room. 

He  was  roused  from  his  reverie  by  the  voice  of  his  host. 

"  You  went  out  to  fetch  something,  didn't  you?  "  queried 
Ward. 

"  Butter,"  said  Christopher  with  a  smile,  and  added,  "  I 
had  some  trouble  in  getting  it,  and  when  I  got  back  I  found 
the  police-van  and  a  great  crowd  at  the  door,  and  over  their 
heads  I  saw  the  helmets  of  the  policemen  who  were  arresting 
you." 

"  You  had  a  lucky  escape.  What  did  you  do  after- 
wards ?  " 

"  I  lay  in  hiding  in  east-end  attics  for  the  best  part  of  a 
year,  and  then  got  away  to  America.  I've  lived  there  ever 
since." 

"  And  what  brings  you  over  here  now?  " 

Christopher  looked  round  the  room  hastily  as  if  to  assure 
himself  that  nobody  could  overhear  him,  and  sinking  his  voice 
replied : 

"You  know  that  the  English  are  going  to  fight  the 
Boers?" 

Ward  nodded. 

"  Well,"  Christopher  went  on,  "  there  are  a  few  people 


GLENCOOLE  25 

who'd    like    to    give    a    helping    hand    where    it's   needed." 

Ward  suddenly  became  convulsed  with  energy. 

"  For  God's  sake,  Reilly,"  he  exclaimed,  "  think  what 
you're  about.  You're  going  to  waste  yourself  .  .  .  waste 
yourself." 

Christopher  was  amazed  at  this  outburst,  and  was  about 
to  speak  when  he  heard  a  tap  at  the  door. 

"  Come  in,"  said  Ward,  and  a  girl  entered  with  a  tea- 
tray,  which  she  deposited  upon  the  table.  As  Ward  went 
to  pour  out  the  tea  a  dark  shy  boy  of  about  ten  years  of  age 
came  into  the  room. 

"Well,  laddie,  where  have  you  been?"  asked  Ward. 

"  Over  in  Glendhu,  father,"  said  the  boy. 

"  This  is  my  son,  Stephen,  Chris,"  said  Ward. 

Christopher  held  out  his  hand  which  Stephen  touched  hur- 
riedly, immediately  afterwards  retiring  to  a  distant  chair. 

"  How  did  you  find  me  out?  "  asked  Ward  in  the  course 
of  the  meal. 

"  I  met  Magrath  in  Brunswick  Street  the  other  day,  and 
he  told  me." 

"  Is  he  with  you  in  that  business?  " 

"  Not  he.     He  was  always  a  quitter." 

They  talked  on  indifferent  subjects  for  a  while.  All  the 
time  Stephen  sat  silent,  and  Christopher's  attempts  to  draw 
him  into  conversation  extracted  only  monosyllables  or  a 
somewhat  sheepish  smile.  Christopher  was  beginning  to 
think  the  boy  stupid  and  to  compare  him  unfavourably  with 
his  bright  little  nephew  in  Dublin,  when  in  the  middle  of 
something  he  was  saying  he  happened  to  glance  in  Stephen's 
direction  and  saw  that  the  boy's  eyes  were  fixed  intently 
upon  himself  as  if  he  were  analysing  what  he  was  saying. 
Stephen  at  once  looked  away,  but  as  long  as  he  remained  in 
the  room  Christopher  felt  uncomfortably  conscious  of  being 
under  constant  inspection. 

Tea  over  the  men  produced  their  pipes  and  adjourned 
to  %  seat  in  the  garden  where  they  basked  in  the  mellow 
warmth  of  the  afternoon  sun.  Stephen  whistled  up  a  dog 


26  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  went  off  with  him  for  a  walk.     After  a  short  silence 
Christopher  spoke. 

"  I  was  very  surprised  by  what  you  said  before  tea. 
thought  you  were  unchangeable." 

"  So  did  I  —  once,"  said  Ward  grimly. 

"  But  how  much  have  you  changed?  "  asked  the  younger 
man  anxiously. 

"Just  to  this  extent:  that  I  see  no  good  in  letting  a  man 
waste  his  life  pursuing  the  unattainable  or  serving  those  who 
don't  want  to  be  served." 

"  I'd  like  to  know,"  said  Christopher  thoughtfully,  "  what 
brought  a  man  like  you  to  that  frame  of  mind  ?  " 

"  It's  a  long  story,"  said  Ward.  "  Have  you  patience  to 
listen  to  all  that  has  happened  to  me  since  —  since  you  went 
out  for  the  butter  ?  " 

"  That's  what  I  came  for,"  said  Christopher. 

2 

"  You  know,  of  course,"  said  Ward,  "  that  Doyle  turned 
Queen's  evidence.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  had  betrayed  us 
from  the  beginning.  If  ever  a  man  looked  honest  and  trust- 
worthy'that  man  was  Doyle.  I  would  have  trusted  him  more 
completely  than  myself;  and  I  was  to  have  married  his  sis- 
ter. She  trusted  him  too,  the  dear  girl.  The  best  and 
bravest  girl  ever  born  in  Ireland,  Chris.  Well  as  she  knew 
that  her  brother  and  her  sweetheart  were  going  to  certain 
death  she  made  no  complaint  and  never  tried  to  stop  us. 
Well,  Doyle  proved  false,  and  when  a  man  like  him  is 
found  wanting,  Chris,  it  shakes  your  faith  in  mankind  and 
makes  you  ask  whom  can  one  be  sure  of  ?  But  Doyle  wasn't 
our  only  disappointment.  You'd  think  that  the  imagination 
even  of  a  race  of  slaves  would  be  fired  by  what  we  proposed 
to  do.  England's  ministers,  the  authors  of  all  Ireland's 
miseries,  slain  in  their  own  stronghold,  and  the  heart  of  the 
Empire  held  against  her  by  a  handful  of  determined  Irish- 
men. What  oppressed  people  would  fail  to  take  new  cour- 


GLENCOOLE  27 

age  and  new  inspiration  from  such  an  exploit?  Ireland 
failed.  The  weaklings  joined  with  their  masters  in  thanks- 
giving for  the  unmasking  of  the  conspiracy;  the  strong  man 
and  his  parliamentary  following  politely  deprecated  our 
folly ;  and  the  best  that  any  one  said  for  us  was  that  we 
were  honest  but  misguided.  .  .  .  Misguided!  We  were 
called  misguided  by  men  who  mouthed  the  name  of  Robert 
Emmet  on  the  election  platforms  for  a  foreign  Parliament. 

"  Meanwhile  we  languished  in  gaol.  You've  heard  that 
Rafter  went  mad.  Superior  people  remarked  that  it  was  no 
wonder  as  revolutionaries  were  half  mad  already.  You 
know  what  nonsense  that  is.  You  know  what  a  solid  man 
Rafter  was:  not  much  of  the  high-strung  fanatic  about  him. 
Yet  their  treatment  drove  him  mad.  The  wonder  is  that 
any  of  us  remained  sane. 

"  No  better  leader  ever  fought  for  Ireland  than  James 
Milligan.  They  gave  him  a  life  sentence,  but  in  twelve 
years  they  had  killed  him.  He  lies  in  a  nameless  grave  in 
Portland  Prison  and  Ireland  has  forgotten  him.  ...  As 
for  me,  I  was  young  and  they  let  me  off  with  seven  years. 
Seven  years  of  hell  they  were.  They  didn't  think  it  enough 
to  take  my  freedom  from  me  and  rob  me  of  the  sight  of  the 
sky  and  the  trees  and  the  grass,  but  they  made  the  ten 
square  feet  of  ground  they  gave  me  as  uncomfortable  as  the 
inventions"  of  petty  spiteful  minds  could  make  it.  I  had 
only  one  window  and  it  was  so  small  and  so  far  from  the 
floor  that  the  sun  never  reached  me.  Just  one  little  bar  of 
sunlight  used  to  shine  high  up  on  the  opposite  wall  for  half 
an  hour  of  the  day.  I  used  to  wait  for  it  and  Watch  it  all 
the  time  it  was  there,  and  if  that  hour  was  cloudy  then  my 
whole  day  was  black.  ...  I  had  only  a  stool  to  sit  on  and 
it  was  clamped  in  the  centre  of  the  cell,  so  that  if  I  wanted 
to  rest  my  back  I  had  to  sit  on  the  floor  leaning  against  the 
wall.  And  my  little  table  was  also  clamped  down  at  such  a 
distance  from  the  stool  that  I  had  no  comfort  in  eating  my 
food. 


28  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  They  talk  of  the  rack  and  the  scavenger's  daughter  of 
Elizabethan  days.  Well,  modern  England  is  civilized  and 
her  tortures  are  more  refined. 

"They  wouldn't  even  let  me  sleep.  On  the  pretext  of 
making  sure  that  I  hadn't  escaped  (as  if  I  could  escape 
through  a  window  ten  feet  up  and  fifteen  inches  square  with 
two  thick  bars  to  it,  and  the  door  locked  and  bolted)  they 
flashed  a  light  through  the  spy  hole  every  hour.  They 
flashed  it  on  my  face  deliberately  to  wake  me,  and  soon  I 
came  by  force  of  habit  to  wake  beforehand  in  expectation 
of  it. 

"  Do  you  wonder  Patsy  Rafter  went  mad  ? 

"  They  took  seven  years  out  of  my  life  that  way.  Took 
my  youth  clean  away  from  me  so  that  it  was  worse  than  if 
it  had  never  been.  I  went  into  that  cell  a  young  man  of 
twenty-three  and  I  left  it  at  thirty,  tottering  and  half 
crazed. 

"  How  I  love  the  sunshine !  It's  the  greatest  gift  of  God 
to  man,  and  well  do  they  know  it  who  send  their  fellow 
creatures  to  gaol.  When  I  got  my  release  I  wanted  to 
leave  cities  behind  and  begin  a  new  life  out  in  the  open 
where  the  sun  could  shine  on  me  and  the  breezes  blow 
through  and  through  me  and  bring  me  new  strength. 

"  And  I  wanted  sympathy.  When  for  seven  years  you've 
heard  nothing  but  sharp  commands  shouted  at  you,  you  want 
kindness,  you  want  to  be  praised  and  made  much  of.  And 
then  it  was  for  Ireland  I  had  suffered,  and  I  had  lived  for 
the  day  when  Ireland  should  tell  me  I  had  deserved  well  of 
her.  But  Ireland  had  forgotten  me.  The  old  spirit  had 
passed  away  and  save  for  a  few  faithful  souls  men  looked 
upon  me  as  an  ordinary  criminal. 

"  But  Mary  remembered.  She  had  waited  for  me  all 
those  years,  and  at  the  end  of  them,  knowing  what  I  would 
like,  she  got  me  this  cottage  and  filled  it  with  my  books  and 
brought  me  here  from  the  gaol  gate. 

"  And  now  I  could  have  been  happy  but  for  the  spiteful 
minds  of  men.  Minds  that  are  too  small  to  take  in  any- 


GLENCOOLE  29 

thing  else,  take  in  suspicion  with  a  wonderful  facility. 
When  I  married  the  sister  of  Doyle  the  traitor,  men  looked 
at  one  another  knowingly.  Insinuating  talk  was  in  the  air. 
Some  people  suggested  that  my  short  sentence  was  a  sign 
that  I  had  given  information;  others  that  my  imprisonment 
was  not  genuine. 

"  Strange  that  the  one  name  remembered  out  of  all  who 
took  part  in  our  enterprise  should  be  the  traitor's. 

"  But  the  suspicions  of  men  mattered  little  to  me.  Why 
should  I  mind  the  glances  of  village  gossips  when  the  sun 
shone  upon  me?  No.  I  care  nothing  for  what  men  think; 
but  serve  them  again?  Never. 

"  And  then,  as  if  I  had  not  suffered  enough,  my  Mary 
was  taken  from  me  when  Stephen  was  born.  No  man 
could  have  had  a  better  wife,  and  no  cross  word  ever  passed 
between  us.  She  was  too  good  for  this  world  altogether  but 
there  was  no  one  to  follow  her  coffin  but  myself." 

Michael  Ward  paused,  gazing  vacantly  in  front  of  him. 
The  accumulated  misery  of  twenty  years  was  working  upon 
his  soul.  As  for  Christopher,  he  remained  silent.  There 
was  no  comment  to  make  upon  this  record  of  a  broken  life. 

After  a  time  Ward  by  an  almost  visible  effort  of  the  will, 
cast  his  brooding  memories  aside  and  turned  to  his  com- 
panion. 

"Can't  you  understand  me  now?"  he  said.  "Can  you 
free  a  slave  who  uses  his  very  chains  as  a  weapon  against 
his  liberator?  " 

Christopher  hesitated  before  replying,  and  when  he  spoke 
his  words  came  haltingly.  It  was  as  if  he  weighed  each 
before  he  let  it  fall. 

"  After  such  a  story  as  yours,"  he  said,  "  one  like  me,  who 
has  suffered  nothing,  must  feel  that  any  opinion  he  offers 
must  to  a  certain  extent  contain  some  element  of  —  imper- 
tinence. But  what  I  think  is  this.  Your  sufferings  might 
be  ten  times  worse  than  you  have  said,  and  men  ten  times 
more  unjust,  ungrateful  and  small-minded  than  you  have 
found  them  to  be,  and  yet  there  still  remains  —  Ireland." 


30  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

He  reddened  slightly  as  he  said  this,  for  he  was  not  given 
to  voicing  primal  things.  The  words  seemed  to  touch  some 
responsive  chord  in  the  older  man's  soul,  for  he  looked  up 
suddenly  with  a  strange  light  in  his  eye.  But  this  was  only 
momentary.  His  head  drooped  again  and  he  said: 

"You're  young  and  vigorous.  I'm  old  and  broken:  old 
and  broken  at  forty-three."  Then,  almost  beseechingly, 
"  Leave  me  to  my  trees  and  sunshine.  I'm  tired." 

Christopher  was  reminded  of  Mangan's  lines: 

And  lives  he  still  then?     Yes,  old  and  hoary, 
At  thirty-nine  from  despair  and  woe. 

and  felt  that  this  wreck  of  a  man,  clinging  so  desperately  to 
what  was  left  of  the  youth  within  him  was  too  pathetic  a 
creature  to  argue  with. 

Suddenly  Ward  sprang  to  his  feet. 

"  But  this  is  a  melancholy  reception  to  give  you,"  he  said, 
"  after  twenty  years'  separation.  Let's  take  a  stroll  down 
the  glen." 

Christopher  looked  at  his  watch  and  said: 

"  I'm  afraid  it's  nearly  time  for  me  to  be  off.  I've  a  long 
ride  before  me." 

"  Nonsense.     You'll  stay  the  night  surely?  " 

After  some  persuasion  Christopher  agreed,  and  they  set 
out  for  the  gap  at  the  far  end  of  the  glen.  Here  they  left 
the  road  and  ascended  the  tree-clad  hillside,  treading  a  car- 
pet of  pine-needles. 

"  One  of  our  few  surviving  woods,"  said  Ward.  "  Ire- 
land is  being  steadily  stripped  of  her  trees  by  the  short 
sighted  greed  of  her  land  owners.  I  come  here  every  day  to 
enjoy  the  sight  of  them  so  long  as  they  are  left  to  me.  Al- 
ready a  little  wood  beyond  the  hill  there  has  been  cut  down 
and  I  can't  bear  to  look  at  the  spot." 

There  was  sorrow  and  anger  in  his  voice.  They  had 
paused  in  their  climb  to  take  breath. 

"  All  over  the  country  this  wholesale  destruction  of  ir- 
replaceable beauty  goes  on,"  continued  Ward.  "And  be- 


GLENCOOLE  31 

cause  some  damned  young  fool  of  a  land  owner  is  drinking 
and  whoring  in  London  these  trees  here  that  I've  known 
and  loved  for  years  will  soon  be  taken  to  pay  for  his  pleas- 
ures. .  .  .  Well,  let  us  enjoy  them  while  they  last.  Aren't 
they  magnificent?  " 

"  In  America,"  said  Christopher,  "  they  call  them  sun- 
shine-stoppers and  regard  them  merely  as  potential  telegraph 
poles." 

They  resumed  the  ascent  and  emerging  from  the  belt  of 
trees  reached  the  top  of  the  hill.  A  magnificent  panorama 
spread  itself  before  them.  Across  the  valley  were  the  gently 
curved  Three  Rock  and  Two  Rock  Mountains,  bare  and 
barren,  with  little  woods  in  the  valleys  beneath.  To  the 
south  the  Sugar  Loaf,  threatening  and  volcanic-looking, 
domineered  over  his  little  brother.  Away  to  the  left  Bray 
Head  sloped  to  the  sea. 

"  Such  a  compact  little  country!  "  said  Christopher,  men- 
tally comparing  it  with  the  great  sprawling  bulk  of  Amer- 
ica. 

"  I  find  it  sufficient,"  said  Ward.  "  I  haven't  travelled 
more  than  a  couple  of  miles  beyond  the  glen  since  Mary 
died." 

Skirting  the  edge  of  the  wood  they  descended  to  the  val- 
ley. As  they  neared  the  house  they  overtook  Stephen  and 
the  dog.  Ward  slapped  the  boy  heartily  on  the  back,  ask- 
ing had  he  had  a  good  walk,  to  which  Stephen  merely  an- 
swered "  Yes,"  and  taking  his  father's  arm,  accompanied 
the  men  home  in  silence. 

3' 

During  supper  Christopher,  under  Ward's  questioning, 
talked  of  America  and  of  his  life  there,  and  when  Chris- 
topher endeavoured  to  shift  the  conversation  to  Ireland, 
Ward  skilfully  fenced  him  off  and  reverted  to  the  original 
topic.  All  the  time  young  Stephen  sat  silent,  listening  in- 
tently, and,  so  Christopher  fancied,  taking  in  as  much  of 
what  was  unsaid  as  of  what  was  said.  After  supper  Ward 


32  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

put  a  match  to  a  pile  of  wood  which  had  been  substituted 
for  the  furze  boughs  on  the  hearth. 

"Curious  primeval  instinct,  isn't  it?"  he  remarked. 
"  It's  a  fine  warm  night,  but  without  a  fire  we  always  feel 
something  lacking." 

"  Another  of  the  things  they  deprive  you  of  in  gaol,"  he 
was  reflecting. 

The  men  lit  their  pipes  and  drew  their  chairs  up  to  the 
cheerful  blaze. 

"  Go  and  get  your  Horace,  Stephen,"  said  Ward,  and  the 
boy  left  the  room. 

"  He's  young  to  have  got  to  Horace,"  remarked  Chris- 
topher. 

"  Eleven.  Well,  yes.  I  was  only  doing  Caesar  myself 
at  that  age,  but  then  that  was  at  school.  I  teach  Stephen 
myself." 

Stephen  returned,  carrying  a  slim  copy  of  the  Third  Book 
of  Odes,  and  stood  beside  his  father's  chair. 

"Where  are  we  now?"  asked  WTard. 

"  First  half  of  Ode  Two." 

"  Read  it  out  then.  You  won't  mind?  "  he  added,  look- 
ing apologetically  at  Christopher,  who  shook  his  head. 

Stephen  began  to  read  the  ode  beginning:  "  Angustam 
amice  pauperiem  pati."  He  then  translated  the  first  three 
stanzas  into  very  fair  English,  and  began  on  the  fourth. 

Dulce  et  decorum  est  pro  patria  mori/  "  he  read.  "  '  It 
is  sweet  and  proper  to  die  for  one's  country.'  Is  it?"  he 
asked,  looking  up. 

"  That's  only  one  of  Horace's  attempts  at  nobility,"  said 
Ward. 

"  Then  he  must  have  thought  other  people  would  think  it 
noble,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Not  necessarily,"  said  Ward. 

Stephen  looked  hard  at  his  father  for  a  moment,  seemed 
to  realize  that  he  shirked  being  questioned,  and  picked  up 
the  translation  where  he  had  left  off. 


GLENCOOLE  33 

Stephen  went  early  to  bed,  and  after  his  departure  Chris- 
topher said : 

"  That  boy  has  brains." 

"  So  I  think,"  replied  Ward.  "  But  he's  a  queer  lad  al- 
together. You've  noticed  how  seldom  he  speaks.  That's 
not  shyness.  He's  always  like  that.  And  yet  he's  not  mopy. 
He  spends  most  of  his  time  out  ratting  or  rabbiting  with  his 
dog,  and  he's  as  healthy  as  can  be." 

"  Does  he  read  much?  " 

"  Next  to  nothing.  To  my  knowledge  he's  only  read  one 
book  in  his  life,  and  he  hasn't  finished  that  one  yet.  It's 
a  big  history  of  France,  and  he's  been  working  his  way 
slowly  through  it  for  the  best  part  of  a  year.  It  seems  to 
me  that  though  he  has  plenty  of  brains  they  work  very 
slowly  and  methodically  but  when  they  once  get  hold  of  a 
thing  they  never  let  it  go  again.  When  I  give  him  new  in- 
formation on  any  subject  he  doesn't  make  any  remark:  just 
looks  hard  at  me  and  then  goes  away  to  let  it  sink  in.  Yes. 
He's  a  queer  lad." 

"  Yesterday,"  said  Christopher,  "  I  was  entertaining  a 
little  boy  who  is  his  opposite  in  every  way.  He's  a  nephew 
of  mine  and  my  godson,  and  he's  all  chatter  and  questions, — 
questions  that  take  some  answering  too.  And  though  he's 
only  eight  he's  a  tremendous  reader.  Your  boy  is  luckier 
than  Bernard,  though.  He  has  room  for  full  development 
up  here,  but  my  nephew  will  have  to  shake  his  active  little 
mind  free  from  shackles  and  hammer  it  against  walls  if  it 
is  to  grow  at  all.  His  father's  a  narrowminded  irreligious 
bigot  and  a  violent  Unionist,  and  my  sister  is  completely 
under  his  thumb,  so  I  know  the  kind  of  up-bringing  he'll 
get.  They'll  train  his  mind  to  run  in  a  groove,  and  a 
damned  twisty  groove  it  will  be,  dodging  obstacles  and  down- 
hill all  the  way.  They'll  try  to  prevent  him  thinking  too 
much  and  fix  his  attention  on  the  accepted.  They'll  teach 
him  that  things  as  they  are  are  all  for  the  best ;  that  it  is 
unwise  to  probe  too  deep  into  ideas  which  it  would  be  dan- 


34  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

gerous  to  follow  to  their  logical  conclusion;  and  that  the 
connection  with  England  is  part  of  the  established  order  of 
the  universe.  '  Eat,  shirk,  and  be  respectable,  for  tomorrow 
you  may  be  knighted,'  is  the  motto  they'll  set  him,  and  if 
he's  the  boy  I  take  him  for  he'll  be  struggling  most  of  his 
youth  with  the  fog  they'll  raise  round  him,  like  Peer  Gynt 
with  the  Boig.  If  I  could  only  be  near  I'd  be  some  help 
to  him  but  God  knows  what  this  war  may  bring." 

"  So  you  fully  intend  to  throw  your  life  away  for  a  people 
who  are  only  a  name  to  you  ?  " 

"  No.  I  fight  against  England.  Those  I  fight  with  don't 
matter  a  damn,  though  for  that  matter  they've  as  good  a 
cause  as  England  ever  fought  against." 

"Well,  it's  no  business  of  mine.  But  I  hate  to  see  life 
wasted." 

"  So  does  any  man.  It  all  turns  on  what  you  mean  by 
waste." 

"  Any  life  given  for  this  island  of  '  bellowing  slaves  and 
genteel  dastards  '  is  wasted.  And  I  tell  you  this,  I'm  not 
going  to  let  Stephen  waste  himself  for  such  a  people.  You're 
afraid  that  your  little  nephew  may  drift  into  one  kind  of 
slavery  and  you'd  like  to  hurry  him  into  another.  My 
Stephen  shall  be  slave  to  nothing.  Written  or  spoken  word 
about  this  island  of  fools  and  traitors  he  has  never  seen  or 
heard,  and  never  shall  so  long  as  I  can  prevent  it." 

"  Then  he  becomes  a  slave  to  you  and  to  ignorance." 

Ward  was  momentarily  taken  aback.  He  fumbled  for 
words  for  a  minute  and  then  stammered  out: 

"  I  don't  want  him  to  suffer  as  I  did." 

"  Not  even  of  his  free  choice  ?  " 

"  There's  no  free  choice,"  Ward  almost  shouted  in  his 
excitement.  "  This  damnable  old  island  gets  her  spell  on 
you  and  you're  no  longer  your  own  master.  Well  I  know  it, 
and  so  do  you." 

"  Metaphysical  rubbish,"  said  Christopher  coolly.  "  Eye- 
wash, my  friend.  The  will  to  do  what  one  considers  one's 
duty  comes  from  oneself.  There's  no  Granuailing  about  it. 


GLENCOOLE  35 

And  as  for  you,  if  you  jail  your  boy's  mind  you'll  go  one 
worse  than  those  who  jailed  your  body  .  .  . 

"My  God!"  he  exclaimed  suddenly,  "are  children's 
minds  always  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  fools  who  beget 
them?" 

"  You  have  no  son,  Reilly,"  said  Ward. 

"  Which  remark,  though  tragic,  is  quite  off  the  point," 
replied  the  other. 

He  put  his  pipe  in  his  pocket  and  lit  a  cigarette.  Ward 
refilled  his  pipe,  and  for  quarter  of  an  hour  they  smoked 
in  silence.  Ward  was  thinking  hard,  and  the  younger  man, 
watching  him  intently,  seemed  to  follow  his  meditations. 

"  Besides,"  he  said  at  length,  "  you  can't  keep  him  igno- 
rant for  ever.  And  when  knowledge  comes  he'll  be  hard 
on  those  who  tried  to  keep  it  from  him." 

"  There's  something  in  that,"  Ward  admitted.  He 
yawned  heavily. 

"  Let's  go  to  bed,"  he  suggested. 

4 

Next  morning  after  breakfast  Ward  went  off  on  some 
farm  business,  leaving  Christopher  in  the  garden  to  enjoy  the 
cool  freshness  of  the  air.  Bye  and  bye  Stephen  approached 
and  without  any  preliminary  asked : 

"Is  it  a  sweet  and  proper  thing  to  die  for  your  coun- 
try?" 

"  Yes, —  and  more." 

"Why?" 

"  Well,  to  answer  that  I'd  have  to  be  sure  that  you  know 
what  your  country  is." 

"  I  don't." 

"Your  country,  or  your  fatherland  (which  is  a  better 
translation  for  '  patria'}  is  the  land  where  you  and  your 
fathers  were  born." 

"Yes.  But  why  is  it  proper  to  die  for  it?  Does  it  do 
the  land  any  good  ?  And  why  should  you  do  the  land  any 
good  ?  " 


36  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  All  the  children  of  the  same  fatherland  are  in  a  sense 
brothers,  and  for  the  good  of  all  they  must  stick  together. 
And  if  any  one  attacks  them  they  must  unite  and  help  each 
other,  and  if  necessary  be  ready  to  die  in  the  fight.  So  that 
dying  for  fatherland  really  means  dying  for  the  sake  of  your 
friends  and  brothers.  You  see,  the  safety  of  each  one  de- 
pends on  the  safety  of  them  all,  and  the  safety  of  all  depends 
on  the  readiness  of  each  man  to  sacrifice  his  own  safety  for 
the  rest." 

"  Then  Horace  was  telling  the  truth  ?  " 

"  For  once.  But  you  needn't  mind  Horace.  He  was  a 
nasty  little  beast  who  only  told  the  truth  when  it  sounded 
clever.  And  now,  to  turn  to  more  interesting  subjects, 
how's  your  rabbiting?  " 

"  I  was  just  going  to  see  to  some  snares  I  set.  Would 
you  like  to  come?  " 

"  Sure  thing.     Lead  on  and  I'll  follow." 

They  went  up  the  slope  behind  the  cottage,  crossing  some 
of  Ward's  fields,  and  emerged  on  some  waste  land  which 
was  a  veritable  rabbit  warren.  They  went  to  each  snare  in 
turn,  Stephen  pocketing  the  prey.  Some  of  the  rabbits  were 
still  living,  and  these  Stephen  killed  in  spite  of  Christopher's 
appeal  to  let  them  go  free. 

"  I  couldn't  bear  to  kill  a  thing  like  that,"  said  Chris- 
topher. 

"  They  rob  us  and  they're  good  to  eat,"  replied  Stephen 
in  matter-of-fact  tones. 

"  I  know.  I  might  reason  that  way  myself,  but  their 
screams  and  the  look  in  their  eyes  would  be  too  much  for 
me." 

"  You  wouldn't  bother  much  about  the  look  in  their  eyes 
if  you  saw  them  eating  your  cabbage  patch." 

"Duke  et  decorum  est  pro  patchia  mori"  said  Chris- 
topher, and  Stephen  grinned. 

"  Young  barbarian,"  thought  Christopher.  "  Puts  his 
head  before  his  heart  every  time.  He'll  be  a  great  man 
some  day.  Wonder  will  he  and  Bernard  ever  meet." 


GLENCOOLE  37 

Stephen  having  dispatched  the  last  of  his  victims,  they 
turned  homewards. 

In  the  early  afternoon  Christopher  got  ready  to  return  to 
town. 

"  Good-bye,  old  man,"  said  Ward,  standing  at  the  gate. 
"  Good-bye,  and  the  best  of  luck." 

"  Good-bye,"  said  Christopher,  and  they  shook  hands 
warmly. 

"  I'll  see  you  to  the  top  of  the  glen,"  said  Stephen. 

They  set  off  together,  Christopher  wheeling  his  bicycle 
and  Stephen  by  his  side.  They  said  very  little.  Chris- 
topher joked  about  the  size  of  the  bridge  and  Stephen  told 
him  disjointed  stories  about  the  other  people  in  the  valley. 
At  length  they  reached  the  top  of  the  rise  and  looked  down 
on  the  city  in  the  distance. 

"  I've  never  been  in  Dublin,"  said  Stephen. 

"  You'll  go  there  soon  enough,"  replied  Christopher. 

"  Why  do  you  say  that?     Won't  I  like  it?  " 

"  Glencoole's  a  better  place." 

"  It's  a  lonely  place  then." 

"  There  are  worse  things  than  loneliness." 

"  You  know  better  than  me.  Are  you  ever  coming  back 
here  again  ?  " 

"  If  I  have  luck,"  said  Christopher.  "  Good-bye, 
Stephen." 

"  Good-bye." 

They  shook  hands.  Christopher  mounted  his  bicycle  and 
slid  down  the  road  towards  the  city. 

5 

Michael  Ward  was  profoundly  moved  by  his  last  talk 
with  Christopher.  He  had  been  leading  a  self  centred  and 
monotonous  life  for  years,  a  perpetual  Achillean  sulk  which 
he  had  considered  rather  fine  and  which  was  really  an  emo- 
tional luxury.  The  preservation  of  his  son's  ignorance  also 
it  had  pleased  him  to  regard  as  a  heaven-appointed  task. 
Now  he  began  to  see  things  in  a  new  light.  He  saw  how 


38  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

much  of  personal  pride  and  selfishness  had  been  in  his  whole 
attitude,  and  though  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  change 
his  own  mode  of  life  and  thought  he  began  to  be  ashamed  of 
the  restrictions  he  had  imposed  on  Stephen.  Pride  yields 
slowly,  and  this  self  revelation  occupied  some  time.  Mean- 
while life  at  Glencoole  went  on  much  the  same  as  ever  save 
that  Ward  became  gradually  more  communicative  on  sub- 
jects he  had  formerly  shirked. 

Ward  was  very  much  mistaken  when  he  told  Christopher 
that  his  son's  mind  worked  slowly.  The  boy's  intelligence 
was  if  anything  quicker  than  the  average,  but  it  was  a 
singularly  cool  one.  He  was  gifted  with  a  detachment  be- 
yond his  years,  and  he  never  received  any  information  with- 
out asking  himself  whether  the  speaker  was  telling  the  truth 
and,  if  he  was,  whether  his  opinion  would  be  of  value.  This 
was  the  cause  of  the  long  hard  look  which  his  father  had 
imagined  to  be  a  sign  of  slowness. 

This  attitude  of  perpetual  doubt  and  detachment  was  only 
a  part  of  the  general  hardness  of  Stephen's  character.  No 
extraneous  emotion  ever  seemed  to  deter  him  from  anything 
he  wanted  to  do.  Christopher  had  noticed  this  in  connec- 
tion with  the  rabbit-trapping  incident  and  hastily  concluded 
that  the  boy  was  callous.  But  Stephen  would  as  soon  have 
thought  of  killing  a  song-bird  as  of  sparing  a  rat.  He  was 
pre-eminently  logical  and  purposeful. 

His  father  too  found  him  lacking  in  affection:  undemon- 
strative he  preferred  to  call  it.  Stephen's  affections  as  a 
matter  of  fact  were  not  really  shallow,  but  when  the  depend- 
ent filial  feeling  of  youth  had  begun  to  wear  off  he  had 
begun  to  question  his  father  and  later  on  to  see  through 
him.  Blood  has  strong  ties,  but  as  adolescence  approached 
he  began  to  wonder  why  he  should  love  this  proud,  selfish, 
irritable  old  man.  The  mere  fact  that  he  had  begotten  him 
did  not  seem  sufficient  explanation. 

About  nine  months  after  Christopher's  departure  Michael 
Ward  quietly  unlocked  a  cupboard  underneath  one  of  the 
bookshelves.  Some  time  before  Stephen  had  at  last  come  to 


GLENCOOLE  39 

the  end  of  his  History  of  France  and  was  now  well  started 
on  a  History  of  Ancient  Greece,  so  his  father  felt  that  the 
risk  of  the  contents  of  the  cupboard  being  soon  discovered 
was  but  small.  However,  one  day  not  long  after  Stephen 
suddenly  said  at  breakfast: 

"  Father,  you  never  told  me  we'd  been  conquered  by  the 
English." 

"  It  happened  a  long  time  ago,  Stephen." 

"Well,  oughtn't  we  do  something  to  drive  them  out?" 

Stephen  was  a  disconcertingly  logical  child. 


CHAPTER  III 

END   OF   A   STORY 


THE  Empire  was  at  war  .  .  . 
When  England  goes  to  war  she  is  not  content  like 
other  countries  to  claim  that  her  quarrel  is  right.  It  is 
always  for  Righteousness  itself  that  she  fights,  so  of  course 
her  foes  must  naturally  be  for  Evil.  The  Boers  therefore, 
being  enemies  to  the  Empire,  were  found  to  be  dirty  un- 
civilized and  unchristian  and  to  have  no  respect  for  treaties, 
while  their  leader  was  revealed  as  a  criminal  of  the  lowest 
type.  To  conquer  such  a  people  and  annex  the  gold  and 
diamond  mines  they  were  unfit  to  possess  thus  became  for 
England  a  Christian  duty. 

"  That  fellow  Kruger,"  said  Dr.  Lascelles,  full  of  virtu- 
ous indignation  brought  on  by  a  character  sketch  in  the 
Morning  Post,  "  ought  to  be  shot." 

England's  little  colony  in  Dublin  was  not  to  be  out-done 
in  fervour  or  fever  by  its  mighty  mother.  Red-white-and- 
blue  bunting  flaunted  a  gaudy  farewell  to  the  dust-coloured 
troops  when  they  marched  away;  Kipling's  songs  were  on 
every  loyal  lip;  badges  were  sported  in  every  loyal  button- 
hole. Fond  mothers  dressed  their  little  boys  in  khaki,  much 
to  the  envy  of  Bernard,  who,  forgetful  of  purple-striped 
shirts  and  silver-rimmed  shields,  tormented  his  mother  into 
getting  the  like  for  him.  But  by  the  time  he  had  got  it 
the  craze  had  died  out,  and  finding  himself  alone  and  con- 
spicuous he  soon  returned  to  his  sailor  suit.  Later  on  his 
father  gave  him  a  badge  with  a  photograph  of  Queen  Vic- 
toria on  one  side  and  one  of  Lord  Roberts  on  the  other. 
This  he  wore  in  his  button-hole  for  a  few  days  until  he  met 
40 


END  OF  A  STORY  41 

Hektor  O'Flaherty  in  Stephen's  Green,  who,  with  con- 
temptuous words  which  greatly  puzzled  our  hero,  tore  it 
from  its  place  and  ground  it  under  his  heel.  The  children 
also  inserted  a  new  invocation  into  their  prayers :  "  God 
bless  the  Queen  and  give  her  victory  over  her  enemies,"  and 
Bernard  used  to  add  under  his  breath :  "  And  don't  let  the 
Boers  come  and  kill  us."  It  was  a  thrilling  and  exciting 
time. 

"Why  don't  we  always  do  these  things?"  he  asked  his 
mother. 

And  the  war  went  on. 

Bernard  used  to  steal  the  illustrated  papers  from  his  fa- 
ther's waiting-room  and  make  tableaux  with  his  lead  sol- 
diers after  the  manner  of  the  battle  pictures.  He  feasted 
full  of  glory  and  great  deeds  and  longed  to  be  a  man  and 
out  in  the  fighting.  He  used  to  picture  himself  holding  the 
pass  alone  like  Cuchulain  against  tremendous  odds,  or  slay- 
ing Kruger  in  single  combat  while  two  armies  looked  on. 
He  wanted  to  talk  to  Uncle  Christopher  about  it  all,  but 
his  godfather  had  mysteriously  vanished,  and  when  he  asked 
his  mother  was  he  gone  to  the  war  she  only  shook  her  head. 

A  year  went  by  and  still  the  war  went  on. 

Doctor  Lascelles  was  knighted  and  Bernard  wondered 
what  dragon  he  had  slain  and  was  very  disappointed  when 
he  donned  no  shining  armour  to  go  out  and  fight  the  Boers. 
But  the  war  was  forgotten  in  the  excitement  of  moving  to 
the  new  house  on  Merrion  Square,  and  exploring  the  new 
nursery,  and  making  new  friends,  and  playing  new  games  in 
the  secluded  walks  of  the  Square  itself.  And  Bernard  was 
somewhat  compensated  for  the  loss  of  Hektor  O'Flaherty 
by  his  own  attainment  of  an  analogous  position  among  his 
new  associates. 

2 

When  Bernard  was  ten  years  of  age  he  made  his  First 
Communion. 

His  early   religious  training  had  been   the  work  of  his 


42  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

mother.  She  was  what  is  generally  called  a  good  pious 
Catholic:  that  is  to  say  she  went  to  Mass  frequently,  fasted 
on  Fridays,  had  numerous  "  devotions  "  and  superstitions, 
had  no  code  of  ethics,  and  was  totally  ignorant  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  the  Catholic  religion.  Destitute  as  she  was  of 
reason  and  knowledge  she  nevertheless  considered  it  her  ma- 
ternal duty  to  instruct  her  son  in  the  fundamentals  of  both. 
If  her  watch  had  gone  out  of  order  she  would  not  have 
dreamt  of  meddling  with  its  mechanism  herself,  yet  she  felt 
in  no  way  incapable  of  revealing  infinity  to  the  subtle  and 
complicated  mind  of  a  child.  So  when  Bernard  was  very 
young  she  took  him  on  her  knee  and  told  him  pretty  stories 
about  angels,  and  good  little  children  who  went  to  heaven, 
and  bad  big  children  who  went  to  hell.  She  told  him  that 
if  he  was  good  he  would  sit  on  a  jewelled  throne  in  heaven 
wearing  a  crown  and  a  pair  of  O  such  lovely  wings  (which 
last  was  what  most  appealed  to  Bernard  in  the  prospect), 
and  that  if  he  was  bad  he  would  be  burnt  to  ashes  with  the 
devils  in  hell.  Later  on  she  taught  him  his  catechism  and 
was  annoyed  to  find  that  Bernard  was  more  interested  in 
finding  out  the  meanings  of  the  long  words  than  in  the  doc- 
trines they  expressed. 

Then  he  was  sent  to  a  preparatory  school  where  the  good 
nuns  (as  they  love  to  be  called)  prepared  him  for  his  first 
confession  in  much  the  same  ignorant  way  as  his  mother  had 
employed.  He  was  eight  years  of  age  when  he  first  pre- 
sented his  soul  to  be  cleansed  of  its  iniquities  and  after  that 
he  was  compelled  to  repeat  the  process  monthly.  Frequently 
he  was  so  ashamed  of  his  cleanliness  as  to  invent  sins,  and 
once  he  even  went  so  far  as  to  accuse  himself  of  Lust,  not 
knowing  in  the  least  what  it  meant,  but  because  it  was  a 
new  sin,  and  a  deadly  one. 

And  no\v  came  the  first  Communion  Day.  "  The  great- 
est day  of  your  life,"  he  was  told, — "  and  the  happiest." 
He  bent  his  head  and  joined  his  hands  as  reverently  as  any, 
and  his  mother  thought  he  looked  a  little  cherub  in  his 
white  sailor  suit.  Afterwards  there  was  a  magnificent 


END  OF  A  STORY*  43 

breakfast,  and  the  good  nuns  went  about  saying  pious  things 
to  the  First  Communicants  and  presenting  them  with  what 
are  called  Holy  Pictures.  And  towards  the  end  of  the  day 
Bernard  dismayed  his  mother  by  saying  in  a  disappointed 
tone: 

"  Mother,  when  is  the  happiness  going  to  begin1?  " 

"Aren't  you  happy  now,  darling?"  she  remonstrated. 

"  Oh,  I'm  all  right,  but  nothing  extra." 

"  Oh,  Bernard!  what  a  thing  to  say!  " 

"  Well,  it's  true." 

His  mother  sighed.  He  was  no  longer  the  innocent 
thoughtless  boy  she  would  have  liked  him  to  remain.  She 
had  noticed  his  growing  roughness  and  impatience  of 
caresses,  and  as  his  golden  curls  darkened  into  brown  and 
his  chubby  cheeks  lengthened  she  felt  that  he  was  becoming 
more  and  more  independent  of  her.  She  almost  resented 
his  growth  to  boyhood,  and  indeed  wished  him  still  an  in- 
fant. She  remembered  the  days  when  he  came  with  all  his 
questions  to  her  as  to  the  fount  of  wisdom  and  knowledge; 
when  her  answers  were  taken  for  granted  without  hesita- 
tion or  demur.  Now  it  was  always  to  his  father  that  he 
went,  or  to  a  book,  and  she  began  to  regret  the  "  Don't 
bother  me;  I'm  busy"  with  which  she  had  too  frequently 
fended  off  his  inquiries. 

3 

The  war  still  went  on. 

And  one  day  Bernard  came  upon  his  mother  in  tears 
with  an  open  letter  in  her  lap.  He  asked  her  what  was 
wrong,  and  she  put  her  arms  round  him  and  told  him  that 
Uncle  Chris  had  been  killed  in  the  war,  and  the  two  of 
them  wept  together  for  a  little  while.  Then  Bernard  went 
away  to  think  of  Uncle  Chris  by  himself,  and  he  fancied 
him  fighting  his  last  fight  like  Cuchulain,  driving  his 
chariot  through  the  hosts  of  the  enemy  till  they  overwhelmed 
him. 

That    night   he    slept    with    Cuchulain    of   Muirthemne 


44  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

against  his  cheek,  and  his  father  going  up  to  the  nursery 
saw  it  and  took  it  downstairs  to  read.  Perceiving  it  to  be 
a  dangerous  book  he  put  it  away  on  a  shelf  in  the  dark. 

4 

It  was  through  Mrs.  Harvey,  wife  of  Dr.  Harvey  the 
fashionable  oculist,  and  an  old  school  friend  of  Lady  Las- 
celles,  that  the  .news  leaked  out  that  Sir  Eugene's  brother- 
in-law  had  been  killed  fighting  for  the  Boers.  The  young 
man  was  unknown  in  Dublin  and  the  plausible  physician 
might  have  glossed  things  over  but  for  this  woman's  med- 
dling tongue.  Where  she  learned  the  truth  is  not  known, 
but  once  it  was  in  her  possession  she  was  as  anxious  as 
Midas'  barber  to  spread  it  abroad,  and  her  weekly-at-home 
gave  her  the  opportunity. 

"  Isn't  it  sad  about  poor  Lady  Lascelles'  brother?  "  said 
her  first  visitor,  Mrs.  Moffat. 

"Doubly  sad,  isn't  it?"  replied  the  hostess,  significantly 
enigmatic. 

"Why  doubly?"  inquired  Mrs.  Moffat. 

"Oh,  don't  you  know?  .  .  .  Well,  perhaps,  I'd  better 
say  nothing  about  it."  This  was  Mrs.  Harvey's  usual  pre- 
liminary to  telling  everything. 

"  But  I  wouldn't  let  it  go  any  further,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey 
after  the  revelation.  "  Don't  you  think  I'm  right?  " 

"  Perfectly  right,"  said  Mrs.  Moffat. 

But  to  make  quite  sure  that  she  was  right  to  keep  the 
matter  secret  each  guest  in  turn  had  to  be  told  the  story 
and  her  advice  on  the  point  requested,  and  one  and  all  were 
agreed  that  it  should  go  no  further. 

When  the  truth  came  out  in  Merrion  Square  it  caused 
quite  a  flutter  in  that  tranquil  dovecot.  Mrs.  Gunby 
Rourke  openly  proclaimed  her  intention  of  cutting  Lady 
Lascelles  on  the  first  opportunity  and  actually  did  so,  but 
the  general  feeling  was  one  of  sympathy  for  the  sorrow  and 
disgrace  that  had  befallen  an  unquestionably  loyal  family, 
and  condolences  in  very  guarded  phraseology  began  to  trickle 


END  OF  A  STORY  45 

in.     Mrs.   Harvey's  were  among  the  first:  eight  pages  of 
conventional  consolations  and  religious  tags. 

"  I  know,  dear  Alice "  she  wrote,  "  that  your  grief  is 
greater  than  that  of  others  who  have  lost  their  dear  ones, 
for  your  sorrow  for  his  death  is  increased  by  the  knowledge 
that  he  fought  for  the  enemy.  I  pray  that  God  may  give 
you  grace  to  bear  this  doubly  bitter  trial,"  and  a  great  deal 
more  in  the  same  strain. 

"  Damned  hard  lines  on  Lascelles,  this  news  about  his 
brother-in-law,"  said  old  Colonel  Delamere  in  the  Kildare 
Street  Club. 

"  Damned  hard  to  know  what  to  do  in  a  case  like  this. 
One  can't  feel  sorry  when  a  traitor  meets  his  deserts,  but 
one  can  hardly  be  unfriendly  to  people  one  knows.  I  sup- 
pose I'd  better  leave  my  card." 

And  he  did. 

Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington,  who  was  intellectual  and  very 
superior  to  the  little  island  in  which  she  deigned  to  live, 
remarked : 

"  Fancy  an  intelligent  man  bothering  like  that  over  an- 
cient grievances!  I  can't  understand  how  a  man  with  big 
interests  in  a  great  country  like  America  should  worry  his 
head  over  a  silly  little  place  like  this." 

Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington  did  not  leave  her  card,  but  that 
was  because  she  was  too  intellectual  to  possess  such  conven- 
tional things. 

-Among  all  the  denizens  of  the  Square  not  one  was  to  be 
found  who  would  say  that  a  brave  man  had  died  for  the 
cause  he  believed  to  be  right.  For  among  them  it  is  not 
considered  the  thing  to  die  for  a  cause  that  is  not  "  respect- 
able." 

5 

The  death  of  his  god-father  wrought  a  great  change  in 
Bernard.  Deprived  of  his  one  confidant  he  turned  in  on 
himself  more  and  more,  reading  and  dreaming  instead  of 
playing  with  his  brothers  and  sisters.  Wearied  of  the  limi- 
tations of  toy  states  and  toy  wars  he  sought  solider  things 


46  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

in  the  wars  and  politics  of  English  History,  which  he  read 
right  through  from  the  Roman  Invasion  to  the  accession  of 
George  the  First,  where  it  became  too  complicated  for  his 
understanding.  Historical  stories  like  those  of  G.-  A.  Henty 
also  attracted  him  and  a  little  book  called  "  Stories  from 
Roman  History  "  set  him  hunting  among  his  father's  books 
for  a  full  history  which  when  found  he  read  from  Anno 
Urbis  Conditae  to  the  Battle  of  Actium.  The  Empire 
somehow  failed  to  attract  him. 

Then  he  got  dissatisfied  with  the  ways  of  real  history, 
where  the  countries  and  people  he  favoured  nearly  always 
came  off  worst,  and  must  needs  construct  an  imaginary 
history  free  from  those  blemishes  in  his  own  head.  He 
invented  an  island  and  divided  it  up  into  a  number  of  states 
each  with  its  own  laws  and  customs.  One  of  these  —  it 
was  a  small  state  on  the  north-east  coast  —  was  his  favourite 
and  he  made  it  the  hero  of  his  political  drama.  It  was 
inhabited  by  a  brave  and  enlightened  people  who  made  up 
in  quality  what  they  lacked  in  numbers.  In  the  south-west 
was  the  largest  and  most  powerful  state  inhabited  by  a  bully- 
ing and  treacherous  population.  This  was  the  villain  state 
and  between  it  and  the  hero  state  wras  a  deadly  feud.  As 
they  were  separated  by  neutrals  the  wars  which  perpetually 
broke  out  between  them  were  of  necessity  preceded  by  di- 
plomacy and  the  making  of  alliances.  Interests  and  prin- 
ciples pulled  the  different  states  in  varying  directions  and 
were  responsible  for  ever-changing  enmities  and  friendships. 
If  Bernard  could  possibly  manage  to  keep  control  over  events 
the  weaker  and  better  cause  always  won,  but  a  train  of 
events  once  started  he  frequently  found  it  impossible  in  the 
interests  of  verisimilitude  to  thwart  the  unfavourable  course 
of  fate,  and  then  the  triumph  of  might  over  right  made  of 
his  island  another  Europe. 

Into  this  imaginary  continent  Bernard  would  frequently 
retire,  building  up  a  history  of  war  and  intrigue  sometimes 
for  hours  at  a  time,  while  those  who  observed  him  thought 
he  was  merely  absent  minded.  This  occupation  lasted  well 


END  OF  A  STORY  47 

on  into  his  school  days,  but  as  he  grew  older  the  character 
of  his  imagination  changed.  His  mind  became  less  political 
and  more  constructive.  He  thought  less  of  warfare  and 
more  of  building  and  law-making.  He  envisaged  beautiful 
cities,  pleasant  villages,  roads,  bridges,  harbours  and  fortifi- 
cations. Formerly  he  had  drawn  for  himself  maps,  phys- 
ical and  political,  of  his  island,  colouring  the  different  states 
as  in  a  map  of  Europe.  Now  he  took  to  making  plans  of 
cities  and  harbours,  and  even  elaborated  an  imaginary  census. 
These  documents  he  drew  up  in  moments  of  privacy;  he 
would  have  died  sooner  than  let  anybody  see  them. 

But  before  he  had  reached  this  stage  a  notable  event 
occurred.  A  History  of  France  came  into  his  hands,  and 
the  tale  of  the  French  Revolution  made  him  at  eleven  years 
of  age  a  red  republican.  Hitherto  his  affections  had  been 
generally  given  to  peoples  rather  than  to  causes.  He  backed 
the  Yorkists  against  the  Lancastrians,  the  Carthaginians 
against  the  Romans,  because  for  no  discoverable  reason  he 
liked  them  better.  Patriotism  itself  meant  nothing  to  him, 
for  love  of  Ireland,  that  fruitful  mother  of  rebels,  could  find 
no  place  in  his  father's  teaching,  and  a  way  has  not  yet  been 
found  to  inculcate  love  of  the  United  Kingdom.  An  inde- 
finable pride  in  Britain's  glory  was  all  Bernard  possessed  as 
a  substitute  for  the  basis  of  citizenship.  .  .  .  But  now  he 
had  obtained  a  creed,  and  by  degrees  it  became  a  passion. 
The  very  name  of  king  soon  came  to  affect  him  as  it  had 
affected  the  ancient  Romans.  Back  to  English  history  he 
went  with  his  new  view  point:  no  more  partisanship  for 
this  apostle  of  an  idea.  Gone  his  championship  of  York 
against  Lancaster:  it  was  but  a  petty  dynastic  squabble  in 
the  eyes  of  this  young  republican.  Gone  his  enthusiasm  for 
the  Cavaliers:  all  his  favour  was  transferred  to  their  op- 
ponents, and  the  star  of  Prince  Rupert  paled  before  the 
sun  of  Hampden.  His  imaginary  island  shared  in  the  gen- 
eral revolution,  and  his  hero  state  became  a  republic  of 
extraordinary  virtue  in  desperate  contention  with  the  villain 
state,  now  a  bigoted  upholder  of  the  ancien  regime. 


48  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

His  father  knew  nothing  of  all  this  mental  activity,  and  it 
was  just  as  well  that  he  did  not,  for  the  truth  would  have 
frightened  and  annoyed  him.  He  would  indeed  have  been 
rather  ashamed  of  his  son's  precocity,  of  his  imagination, 
of  his  pre-occupation  with  ideas;  all  of  which  conflicted 
with  his  own  conception  of  what  a  boy  should  be,  and  was 
associated  in  his  mind  with  queer-mannered  undesirable 
people  with  strange  collars  and  long  hair. 

(And  as  for  you,  madam,  you  are  quite  right  in  saying 
that  you  would  not  have  liked  Bernard  at  all  at  this  age. 
So  different  from  other  little  boys,  isn't  he?  He  thinks  far 
too  much,  which  isn't  right  in  one  so  young,  and  he's  apt  to 
go  into  the  moon  when  you  are  amiably  questioning  him 
about  school  and  other  things  that  ought  to  interest  a  little 
boy.  How  much  nicer  Eugene  is:  so  quaint  and  thought- 
less. He  lets  you  pat  him  on  the  head  too,  and  when  you 
kissed  him  he  did  not  shrink  from  your  lips  as  Bernard  did. 
And  Eugene  is  quite  ready  to  chatter  with  you  and  flatter 
your  age  and  wisdom  by  his  own  childishness,  whereas  Ber- 
nard is  obviously  impatient  to  return  to  that  book  he  was 
reading  when  you  interrupted  him.  .  .  .  Yes,  of  course,  it's 
this' reading  that  does  it.  He  reads  far  more  than  is  good 
for  so  young  a  child.  Gives  them  ideas,  doesn't  it?  .  .  . 
Yes,  madam,  you  are  quite  right.  You  would  not  have  liked 
Bernard  at  all.) 

6 

It  remains  to  be  recorded  how  the  news  of  Christopher 
Reilly's  death  was  received  at  Glencoole.  It  came  in  a  let- 
ter from  a  comrade  in  arms  who  had  been  beside  him  when 
he  died  and  heard  his  last  words.  Michael  Ward  read  it 
in  the  porch  of  his  cottage  on  a  grey  morning  in  April. 

"  My  God !  "  he  groaned.     "  What  waste !  " 

Entering  the  sitting-room  he  found  Stephen  lying  on  the 
floor  engrossed  in  a  huge  volume.  The  mysterious  cupboard 
was  open,  and  the  book  was  the  History  of  the  Four  Mas- 
ters. 


CHAPTER  IV 

YOUNG    ENGLAND 


SIR  EUGENE  LASCELLES  gave  some  fatherly  advice 
to  his  son  on  the  eve  of  his  departure  for  school. 

"  Don't  push  yourself  forward  too  much  at  first,"  he  said. 
"  And  don't  try  to  be  too  clever.  If  the  boys  question  you, 
answer  them  straight,  unless  it's  about  your  sisters,  in  which 
case  I  leave  it  to  your  own  wit  to  find  a  way  out.  Don't 
be  too  friendly  with  masters  or  you'll  get  a  bad  name 
among  the  boys.  Try  and  make  friends  with  decent  gen- 
tlemanly fellows.  Never  funk  anybody,  but  don't  do  any 
more  fighting  than  you  can  help ;  I  believe  it's  out  of  date  at 
Public  Schools  nowadays.  I  needn't  tell  you  never  to  do 
anything  dishonourable,  because  you're  my  son.  Good-bye, 
my  boy,  and  God  bless  you." 

"  A  good,  sound,  manly  talk,"  thought  Sir  Eugene,  "  and 
no  nonsense  about  it." 

A  cab  was  at  the  door  bearing  Bernard's  luggage.  He 
said  good-bye  to  Eugene,  who  was  still  at  a  preparatory 
school,  and  to  Sandy,  who  was  too  young  to  go  to  school  at 
all.  Then  he  kissed  Alice  and  the  baby  and  entered  the  cab 
with  his  mother. 

"  I've  asked  Mrs.  MacBride  to  ask  her  boy  to  look  after 
you,"  said  Lady  Lascelles  as  they  drew  near  to  Kingstown. 
"  So  you'll  have  one  friend  to  start  with." 

Bernard  mumbled  something.  He  dared  not  speak,  being 
on  the  verge  of  tears.  He  nearly  broke  down  as  she  kissed 
him  good-bye  on  the  deck  of  the  steamer. 

"  Good-bye,  darling." 

A  bell  clanged  and  there  was  a  cry  of  "  All  for  the  shore." 
After  a  last  kiss  Lady  Lascelles  went  down  the  gangway. 
49 


5o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

With  tear-dimmed  eyes  Bernard  watched  her  as  they  cast  the 
vessel  off.  The  pier  seemed  to  glide  away.  He  waved  his 
handkerchief  in  reply  to  hers  until  it  had  become  a  flutter- 
ing white  speck  indistinguishable  among  a  multitude  of 
others. 

Then  he  looked  around  for  MacBride,  but  that  youth  was 
too  much  occupied  with  his  own  friends  to  trouble  himself 
about  "  a  kid  my  mater  asked  me  to  look  after."  So  he 
made  the  journey  alone,  miserable,  and  sea-sick. 


He  stood  in  the  vast  play  ground  of  Ashbury  College,  a 
forlorn  little  figure,  very  shy,  very  unhappy,  and  very  cold. 
His  hands  were  thrust  deep  into  his  breeches'  pockets,  partly 
to  keep  them  warm  and  partly  because  he  did  not  know  what 
else  to  do  with  them.  Also,  jingling  his  money  gave  him 
some  employment. 

Interminable  hour!  He  was  too  shy  to  stand  still:  too 
shy  to  walk  about.  He  shifted  his  weight  from  one  foot  to 
another.  He  took  out  his  watch  and  replaced  it  without 
observing  the  time.  He  studied  the  pattern  of  the  railings. 
Looking  out  through  them  he  felt  like  a  caged  animal  in  a 
zoo.  There  were  cows  outside  who  looked  at  him  stolidly 
like  spectators. 

He  turned  back  to  view  the  scene  in  the  play-ground. 
Some  of  the  boys  were  playing  football;  others  were  stroll- 
ing about  conversing.  No  one  noticed  the  new  boy. 

Just  then  a  chattering  group  passed  by  and  suddenly 
turned  upon  him.  He  seemed  to  be  surrounded  by  gigantic 
figures. 

"  Hello,  new  fellow.     What's  your  name?  " 

"  How  old  are  you?  " 

"  Where  do  you  come  from?  " 

"What's  your  father?" 

"  What  class  are  you  in  ?  " 

Bernard  answered  as  politely  as  he  knew  how. 

"  God !     You  must  be  an  awful  stewpot  to  be  put  into 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  51 

Rudiments  at  twelve,"  said  one  boy  after  Bernard's  reply 
to  the  last  question. 

"Awful  cheek  of  a  new  kid  to  be  put  above  you,  Sex- 
ton," said  another:  whereat  all  burst  out  laughing  at  Sexton 
and  took  themselves  off,  much  to  Bernard's  relief. 

Soon  afterwards  a  whistle  sounded  and  the  boys  streamed 
indoors.  Amid  the  prevailing  chatter  Bernard  changed  his 
boots  in  silence  and  made  his  way  to  the  washroom.  In  the 
lobby  outside  a  big  Higher  Line  boy  beckoned  to  him. 

"  Here,  kid!  "  he  said. 

Bernard  approached  bashfully.  His  summoner  was  a 
greasy  looking  person  with  a  nasty  mouth  whose  isolated 
teeth  resembled  lichenous  tombstones  in  a  neglected  grave- 
yard. He  put  a  flabby  hand  on  Bernard's  shoulder,  looking 
at  him  in  a  queer  way  that  puzzled  and  rather  frightened 
him. 

"  Be  my  tart,"  he  said  in  an  eager,  rasping  voice. 

Bernard  had  no  idea  of  his  meaning,  but  the  fellow's 
touch  sent  a  virginal  shudder  through  his  frame  and  wrench- 
ing himself  free  he  fled  into  the  washroom.  Like  a  hunted 
animal  he  crept  along  the  galleries  to  his  class,  glancing 
around  in  every  direction  in  a  fearful  search  for  the  boy 
with  the  nasty  mouth.  All  through  class  he  sat  wondering 
at  his  fear,  puzzling  after  the  big  fellow's  meaning  and 
thinking  what  a  horrible  mouth  he  had. 

This,  Bernard's  third  day  at  the  school,  was  a  half-holi- 
day, but  the  ground  was  too  bad  for  football  owing  to  the 
heavy  rain  of  the  previous  day.  Accordingly  the  school  went 
for  walks  in  its  customary  way,  class  by  class,  each  accom- 
panied by  its  master.  Bernard  was  the  only  new  boy  in  his 
class  and  was  glumly  anticipating  the  prospect  of  being  left 
to  himself  among  the  crowd  when  he  was  hailed  by  a  cheery 
voice. 

"  Hullo,  new  fellow!     Have  you  no  one  to  walk  with?  " 

The  speaker's  pleasant  smile  broke  sun-like  through  Ber- 
nard's cloudy  cogitations.  Bernard  had  heard  his  name  — 
Jack  Willoughby. 


52  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  You  can  come  with  me  if  you  like,"  said  Willoughby, 
without  waiting  for  an  answer  to  his  question. 

"  It's  awfully  decent  of  you,"  stammered  Bernard. 

"  Don't  mention  it,"  said  Willoughby  lightly.  "  Murray, 
who  I  usually  go  with,  has  a  cold.  Let's  come  on." 

The  class,  numbering  some  two  dozen  boys,  passed  out 
of  the  gates  and  took  the  road  to  the  hills.  It  was  a  soft 
autumn  afternoon  and  the  air  was  fresh  and  sweet  from 
the  recent  rain.  Through  ragged  gaps  in  the  clouds  the 
sun  glittered  down  on  puddles  in  the  road.  The  elms  were 
already  stripped  of  their  leaves  but  the  beeches  were  still 
resplendent  in  golden  brown.  The  atmosphere  was  faintly 
perfumed  with  the  scent  of  fallen  leaves. 

"  I  like  the  feel  of  the  air  after  rain,"  said  Bernard  con- 
versationally. 

"  By  Jove,  yes,  it  is  decent,"  replied  Willoughby  in  the 
tone  of  one  to  whom  a  revelation  had  been  imparted.  "  I'd 
never  noticed  that  before.  .  .  .  Are  you  any  use  at  footer?  " 

"  Well,  I've  played/'  said  Bernard  deprecatingly,  and 
added,  "  at  a  preparatory  school,  you  know." 

"  Lmust  keep  an  eye  on  you.  You  look  like  a  good  run- 
ner, but  you  need  weight." 

"  I  generally  won  the  hundred  at  my  last  school,"  said 
Bernard,  "  but  I'm  not  much  at  the  half  mile." 

They  were  now  ascending  a  stiff  incline  and  were  silent 
for  a  moment.  Bernard  was  the  first  to  speak. 

"  I  say,"  he  blurted  out.     "  What's  a  tart?  " 

Willoughby  looked  at  him  blankly. 

"  Why  do  you  ask  that?  "  he  said. 

Bernard  related  the  morning's  episode. 

"  That  must  have  been  Musgrave,"  said  Willoughby 
after  Bernard  had  described  his  questioner.  "  He's  an  awful 
sloppy  idiot." 

"Yes.     But  what  did  he  want?" 

Willoughby's  explanation  came  as  a  horrible  and  discon- 
certing surprise.  Musgrave's  nasty  mouth  recurred  to  Ber- 
nard's memory. 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  53 

"  GooJ  lord!"  he  said.  "There  are  things  in  life  I'd 
never  dreamt  of." 

"  Nothing  to  wonder  at  in  that,  Methuselah,"  said  Wil- 
loughby,  whereat  Bernard  laughed. 

"  Yes.  That  was  a  queer  thing  for  me  to  say,"  he  ad- 
mitted. 

"  Don't  let  this  turn  you  against  Ashbury,  now,"  said 
Willoughby.  "  You'll  run  into  a  lot  of  this  kind  of  slop, 
but  it's  not  the  fault  of  the  school,  only  the  crowd  that's  in 
it.  My  pater  says  this  is  a  degenerate  age.  He  was  here, 
you  know,  and  so  were  my  uncles,  and  so  was  my  grand- 
father. It's  one  of  the  oldest  schools  in  England,  and  I 
hope  you'll  come  to  be  proud  of  it  and  not  call  it  a  hole 
like  some  of  the  rotters  here." 

Bernard  looked  at  Willoughby.  His  face,  usually  im- 
passive, was  lighted  up  now  by  enthusiasm.  His  general 
air  of  cleanliness  and  health  was  very  pleasing.  Bernard 
already  had  friendly  feelings  for  him. 

The  class  came  to  a  halt  in  a  little  valley  among  the  hills. 
Some  one  suggested  a  game  of  Prisoner's  Base,  and  sides 
having  been  rapidly  picked,  play  began.  The  game  went 
smoothly  for  a  time.  Then  a  question  arising  on  some 
knotty  point  in  the  rules  the  absence  of  an  umpire  resulted 
in  the  break  up  of  the  game  into  a  medley  of  arguing  groups. 
Bernard,  forgetting  discretion  in  his  enthusiasm,  found  him- 
self engaged  in  a  heated  altercation  with  the  opposing  cap- 
tain. Suddenly  he  was  conscious  of  a  hush  about  him. 
His  was  the  only  voice  to  be  heard.  He  faltered  in  the 
middle  of  a  sentence  and  then  came  to  a  stop,  his  cheeks 
burning,  his  skin  pricking.  It  was  probably  one  of  the 
most  terrible  moments  of  his  life,  but  it  was  mercifully 
ended  by  the  sudden  resumption  of  the  argument  round 
about,  and  he  thankfully  sought  oblivion. 

"  Are  you  Irish?  "  asked  Willoughby  on  the  way  home. 

"  I  suppose  I  am." 

"  Why  do  you  say  '  I  suppose  '  ?  " 

"  Because  it's  not  a  thing  that  matters  much,  is  it  ?  " 


54  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Don't  let  Mallow  hear  you  say  that." 

"Who's  Mallow?" 

"  That  big,  heavy-looking  chap  in  front  there." 

"  Why  shouldn't  I  let  him  hear  me?  " 

"  He  might  cut  up  rough  about  it.  He's  the  hell  of  a 
rebel,  you  know." 

This  was  all  very  obscure  to  Bernard,  but  he  was  not 
sufficiently  interested  to  push  his  inquiries  any  further. 

When  they  reached  home  they  found  Murray  in  the 
recreation  room.  He  was  a  jovial  person  whose  slight  Irish 
accent  Bernard  found  very  restful  to  the  ear. 

"  Another  Irishman,"  said  Willoughby.  "  There's  a  good 
crowd  of  your  countrymen  here,  you  know.  Let's  go  thirds 
in  a  cake  for  tea." 

"  I've  already  asked  that  ass  Molloy  to  join  us,"  said 
Murray. 

"  Good  lord !  "  groaned  Willoughby,  "  what  did  you  do 
that  for?  " 

"  Couldn't  get  any  one  else  who  wasn't  booked." 

"  Any  one  worse,  J  suppose  you  mean." 

"  What's  wrong  with  Molloy  ?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  He's  the  biggest  ass  in  the  school,"  replied  Willoughby. 
"  He's  got  a  notion  that  it's  a  great  thing  to  be  pally  with 
lords  and  he's  always  jabbering  about  the  dukes  he  meets  in 
the  holidays.  He's  too  much  of  an  ass  to  know  it  doesn't 
go  down  here,  considering  half  the  chaps  in  the  school  are 
related  to  lords." 

"  The  other  day,"  put  in  Murray,  "  he  handed  over  a 
letter  to  his  brother  under  my  nose.  '  Interesting  that  about 
Lord  Galway,'  says  he.  He's  a  blithering  ass." 

"  Then  why  on  earth  did  you  annex  him  ?  Well,  never 
mind.  Has  he  paid  up  yet?  " 

"  No." 

"  Then  let  him  go  to  hell." 

Molloy  thus  disposed  of  they  went  up  to  the  refectory  to- 
gether. 

"  There's  Molloy  looking  at  us,"  said  Murray,  as  they 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  55 

sat  at  tea.  "  But  don't  worry.  He'll  be  too  proud  to  butt 
in  on  us  now." 

"  Most  likely  he'll  apologize  to  us  later  for  having  for- 
gotten us,"  said  Willoughby. 

Tea  over,  they  adjourned  to  the  recreation  room,  where 
Willoughby  and  Murray  played  billiards  while  Bernard 
marked. 

Molloy  approached,  smiling  apologetically. 

"  I  say,  you  chaps,"  he  began,  "  I'm  frightfully  sorry " 

"  All  right,  old  chap.  I  forgive  you,"  interrupted  Mur- 
ray. 

"  Sure  you  don't  mind  ?  " 

"  Delighted,"  said  Murray.     "  Anything  to  oblige." 

And  Molloy  retired. 

The  day  wore  on;  evening  studies;  supper;  recreation; 
night  prayers.  It  was  restful  at  the  end  to  kneel  in  the  half- 
lit  chapel  knowing  that  the  long  day  was  done,  and  looking 
at  the  Tabernacle  to  say  the  little  homely  prayers  he  had 
learnt  at  his  mother's  knee.  Then  the  official  prayers  began. 

"  Blessed  be  the  holy  and  undivided  Trinity  now  and  for 
ever  more,"  said  the  mechanical  voice  of  the  prefect. 

"  Amen,"  faintly  and  sleepily  from  some  of  the  congrega- 
tion. 

"  Come  O  holy  Spirit  fill  the  hearts  of  thy  faithful  and 
kindle  in  them  the  fire  of  thy  love,"  ran  out  the  meaningless 
unpunctuated  monotone. 

For  Bernard  custom  had  not  yet  taken  the  significance 
from  the  words.  "  Do  people  really  mean  prayers  like 
this?  "  he  wondered. 

"  Enlighten  me  I  beseech  thee  and  give  me  an  humble 
and  contrite  heart." 

"  I  don't  feel  very  beseeching,"  thought  Bernard.  "  Does 
any  one  else,  I  wonder."  He  looked  round  at  his  fellows, 
Their  desire  for  humble  and  contrite  hearts  did  not  seem  to 
occasion  them  much  uneasiness.  The  prayers  went  on  and 
came  to  an  end,  and  bench  by  bench  beginning  with  the  big 
boys  at  the  top  the  chapel  began  to  empty.  In  single  file 


56  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

they  streamed  out.  Pad  —  pad  —  pad  went  their  feet  on  the 
parquet  flooring,  with  an  occasional  squeak  of  new  boots. 

Pad,  pad,  pad,  squeak.     Pad,  squeak.     Pad. 

First  the  tall  Higher  Line  fellows,  young  men  almost, 
many  of  them,  whom  Bernard  found  it  hard  to  picture  sit- 
ting at  school  desks.  Here  and  there  a  small  precocious 
youth  appeared  among  them,  high-collared  and  self-conscious. 
Bernard  watched  their  faces  as  they  passed  along:  ordinary 
faces  most  of  them  under  every  shade  of  hair.  Sunny  faces 
and  sniggering  faces.  Heavy  brutal  faces.  Broad  good- 
natured  faces.  Strong  mature  faces  and  weak  chinless  faces. 
One  went  by  with  the  careless  fine-featured  kind  of  face  that 
Bernard  liked  to  look  at.  He  had  heard  some  one  call  to 
another:  "I  say,  Clarence!"  A  good  name,  Clarence. 
This  must  be  Clarence.  (He  turned  out  to  be  Smithers.) 
A  sinister  and  beastly  face.  More  ordinary  faces.  Then 
Musgrave's  face  loomed  into  sight,  and  gave  a  sidelong  leer 
at  Bernard  as  it  passed.  He  walked  with  quick  short  steps, 
hunching  his  shoulders.  What  different  walks  there  were. 
Long  paces,  short  paces,  quick  paces,  slow  paces.  Heavy 
steps,  light  steps,  springy  steps.  Somebody  went  by  who 
bobbed  up  and  down  at  each  pace.  Higher  Line  tailed 
out  into  Lower  Line,  ranging  from  hulking  adolescence  to 
graceful  boyhood,  long-legged,  slim-hipped,  and  large- 
headed  like  himself.  Big  anachronisms  whose  bodies  had 
outgrown  their  brains.  Shapeless  stunted  creatures.  Very 
young  monkey-like  children.  His  own  turn  came  at  last. 

"  That's  for  staring  at  me,  brat,"  said  some  one,  kicking 
him  from  behind.  It  was  Clarence  (or  rather  Smithers.) 

Up  the  stairs  and  to  bed,  where  he  lay  awake  for  an  hour 
or  more  thinking  of  things:  Sexton,  Musgrave,  Willoughby, 
Clarence.  He  remembered  the  game  of  Prisoner's  Base  and 
suddenly  blushed  all  over  his  body. 

"  What  an  ass  I  must  have  looked,"  he  thought.  "  And, 
father  told  me  not  to  shove  myself  forward." 

"  Why  shouldn't  I  shove  myself  forward  ?  "  he  asked  him- 
self a  little  later,  and  soon  after  fell  asleep. 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  57 

3 

A  boy's  first  few  weeks  at  a  public  school  are  all  mystery 
and  confusion.  He  is  like  a  swimmer  tossed  helplessly  about 
on  a  stormy  sea,  thrown  hither  and  thither  with  no  volition 
of  his  own,  and  never  knowing  what  is  going  to  happen 
next.  After  a  time,  however,  the  mystery  is  dissipated; 
what  appeared  to  be  chaos  is  recognized  as  insuperable  order  ; 
the  bewildering  herd  of  boys  analyses  itself  into  individuals 
with  names  of  their  own;  and  life  settles  down  to  the 
monotony  of  a  familiar  and  invariable  time  table. 

The  boys  of  Bernard's  own  class  were  the  first  to  assume 
their  individuality.  The  studious  head  boy  was  found  to  be 
White,  and  the  gay  and  idle  second  boy  (who  would  have 
been  first  if  he  took  the  trouble  to  work)  was  Neville, 
while  in  the  back  bench  were  the  heavyweights,  Sherring- 
ham,  Lashworthy,  Roden,  and  others,  who  were  never  ex- 
pected to  work,  and  indeed  could  not  by  any  known  means 
have  been  made  to  work,  since  Nature  had  so  constructed 
their  frames  that  punishment  was  to  them  a  thing  of  no 
account.  Between  these  extremes  came  the  centre,  ranging 
from  idle  competence  through  solid  mediocrity  down  to 
studious  incompetence.  Here  were  to  be  found  Mallow  the 
saturnine  Irishman;  Rumpworth  the  self-satisfied  who 
worked  because  his  hands  were  soft;  Beaton  who  was  so 
ashamed  of  the  brains  he  possessed  that  he  was  put  to  end- 
less shifts  to  avoid  learning  things;  Ledbury  the  plausible 
deviser  of  cribs  and  excuses;  Sedgwick  the  athlete  who 
worked  like  a  Trojan  in  the  ambition  to  be  an  all-rounder; 
and  half  a  score  others,  among  whom  may  be  mentioned 
Molloy  the  snob,  the  friend  of  Lord  Galway,  and  de  Valona 
and  Tolmeda  the  Dagoes.  Willoughby  was  generally  to 
be  found  within  the  first  eight  places,  whilst  his  friend 
Murray  might  be  first  or  fi^th,  according  as  his  mood  was 
studious  or  the  reverse. 

With  Willoughby,  Bernard's  acquaintance  soon  developed 
into  friendship.  They  had  not  very  much  in  common,  but 
for  some  reason  or  other  they  liked  each  other.  These  things 


58  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

are  not  easily  explainable.  Willoughby's  friend  Murray, 
the  mercurial  Liverpool  Irishman,  would  have  seemed  a 
more  suitable  companion  to  Bernard,  since  he  too  was  in- 
terested in  politics;  but  Murray  was  almost  entirely  pre- 
occupied with  Home  Rule  for  Ireland,  a  subject  in  which 
Bernard  was  profoundly  ignorant,  and  in  which  Murray's 
enthusiastic  half-knowledge  bored  him  intensely. 

Games  were  compulsory  at  Ashbury,  and  on  the  Sunday 
after  the  walk  with  Willoughby  the  whole  school  turned  out 
for  football.  Bernard  being  a  new  boy  found  himself  picked 
in  Third  Match,  an  institution  which  owed  its  existence  to 
the  compulsory  system.  Here  congregated  all  those  who  out 
of  distaste  or  slackness  took  no  interest  in  football.  The 
physically  unfit,  the  corporally  clumsy,  the  intellectual,  the 
cricketer,  the  naturalist,  the  cyclist,  the  slacker, —  all  were 
collected  together  and  compelled  to  spend  the  afternoon 
making  a  farce  of  football.  The  main  object  of  the  players 
was,  of  course,  to  play  as  little  football  as  possible.  Ac- 
cordingly within  ten  minutes  of  the  start  some  one  suc- 
ceeded in  kicking  the  ball  into  the  topmost  branches  of  one 
of  the  elms  that  bordered  the  field,  where  it  stuck  fast. 
Quarter  of  an  hour  was  consumed  in  pretending  to  try 
to  dislodge  it,  by  which  time  the  arrival  of  a  prefect  changed 
the  pretence  to  earnest  and  the  game  recommenced  under 
the  prefect's  watchful  eye.  Bernard  was  very  disappointed 
with  these  proceedings.  He  rather  fancied  himself  as  a 
forward,  having  somewhat  distinguished  himself  in  that  ca- 
pacity at  his  preparatory  school,  and  he  had  looked  forward 
to  a  similar  career  on  the  larger  stage  of  Ashbury.  He  now 
did  his  best  to  show  off  some  of  his  skill  under  the  eye  of 
the  prefect  with  the  result  that  the  latter  came  up  to  him 
afterwards  and  asked  him  why  he  was  in  Third  Match. 
Bernard  explained,  and  the  prefect  went  away,  saying  that 
he  would  see  what  he  could  do  about  getting  him  promoted. 
The  following  Tuesday  and  for  the  rest  of  the  term  Bernard 
was  picked  in  second  match,  where  the  game  was  played 
properly,  and  where  Bernard  so  distinguished  himself  that 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  59 

Club  Captains  began  to  take  notice  of  him  with  an  eye 
to  the  club  matches  played  in  the  following  term. 

And  while  Bernard  showed  promise  of  becoming  a  very 
fair  athlete  he  made  an  immediate  and  unmistakable  mark 
in  the  school  room.  Lacking  the  patience  and  methodical 
mind  that  makes  the  scholar  he  yet  had  the  quickest  wits  in 
the  class,  and  being  also  gifted  with  a  comprehensive  mem- 
ory, he  assimilated  knowledge  rapidly  and  retained  from  a 
cursory  reading  more  than  even  the  more  intelligent  of  his 
mates  could  master  by  conscientious  memorizing.  He  topped 
the  lists  at  the  first  half-term  examinations,  displacing  both 
the  studious  White,  who  was  much  the  better  scholar,  and 
the  careless  Neville,  who  was  the  cleverest  linguist.  To  a 
certain  extent  he  felt  the  hollowness  of  his  triumph,  but 
youth,  vanity,  and  gratified  ambition  will  blind  any  eye  to 
what  it  has  no  wish  to  see. 

And  Ashbury  began  to  charm  him  with  her  beauty  and 
stretched  out  the  tentacles  of  her  traditions  to  enfold  him. 
Beautiful  she  certainly  is,  and  beautiful  are  her  surroundings 
from  the  wild  majesty  of  her  fells  to  the  soft  luxuriance  of 
her  valleys  and  the  trim  neatness  of  her  fields.  The  tawny 
Avon  gliding  at  her  feet  receives  its  laughing  tributary  the 
Dawe  under  the  shadow  of  her  towers,  and  the  sprawling 
waste  of  the  Pennine  Range  thrusts  a  finger-like  process 
down  to  her  very  gates.  And  as  you  approach  her  by  the 
rolling  avenue  lined  by  noble  elms  she  reveals  herself  as  a 
grey  stone  mansion  old  and  stately,  battlemented  and  turret- 
crowned,  and  you  cannot  help  but  love  her.  Then  you  hear 
her  story  and  her  ancient  legends;  and  old  as  the  school  is 
its  home  is  older.  You  hear  how  she  gave  hospitality  to 
Queen  Elizabeth  and  Charles  I ;  how  Cromwell  battered 
her  gates  down ;  how  Constable  painted  her;  and  how  Tenny- 
son wrote  some  beautiful  lines  under  her  inspiration.  You 
will  also  hear  of  the  clandestine  school  kept  in  the  harsh 
old  times  by  the  good  fathers  in  a  neighbouring  farm  house 
and  attended  by  the  sons  of  sturdy  Catholic  squires,  and  how 
when  better  times  came  Sir  James  Osterley  presented  them 


60  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

with  Ashbury  Manor  for  their  habitation.  Then  come  tales 
of  the  school  life  of  last  century,  when  all  was  hard  Spartan 
simplicity;  when  on  winter  mornings  the  boys  had  to  break 
the  ice  in  the  washing  trough  and  did  an  hour's  work  before 
breakfast ;  when  food  was  scarce  and  tough ;  when  discipline 
was  strict  and  punishments  terrible;  when  Ashbury  played 
her  own  games,  and  rough  games  too,  a  tax  on  lungs  and 
limbs;  when,  in  short,  the  world  was  a  finer  place  and  men 
a  finer  race  than  in  these  degenerate  days. 

Old  Ashbury!  Bernard  learned  to  love  her  with  all  the 
sudden  devotion  of  youth.  Grey  walls,  bold  mountains, 
mingling  rivers;  well-sounding  names,  old  customs,  oft- 
heard  legends;  he  loved  them  all,  and  when,  after  the  half- 
term  results  had  been  read  out  and  the  medals  distributed, 
the  great  Hall  rang  with  the  melody  of  the  Ashbury  song, 
his  heart  swelled  with  pride  and  joy  in  being  part  of  it  all. 
In  the  emotion  of  the  moments  the  unpleasant  events  of 
earlier  days  were  forgotten.  He  was  an  Ashburian,  he  told 
himself,  and  to  be  an  Ashburian  seemed  then  to  be  all-suffi- 
cient. The  very  name  of  Ashbury  was  robust  and  breezy, 
bluff  and  honest;  typical  of  all  that  was  best  in  old  Eng- 
land .  .  .  Ashbury.  .  .  .  The  word  was  satisfying  to  pro- 
nounce. Could  meanness,  beastliness,  nastiness  be  associated 
with  such  a  name?  No,  he  told  himself.  Such  things  were 
only  accidental  blots,  with  no  deeper  roots  than  the  lichen 
on  her  old  grey  walls. 

The  song  came  to  an  end,  and  abruptly  Bernard  realized 
that  he  had  not  been  singing  it. 

"  Absent  minded  idiot,"  said  some  one,  jostling  him  as  he 
made  for  the  door. 

4 

To  Ashbury  College  a  boy  was  a  mass  of  crude  metal  to 
be  fused  in  the  flame  of  her  tradition,  cast  in  the  mould  of 
her  curriculum,  and  finally  exported  to  Oxford  for  the  finish- 
ing touches. 

Her  duty  as  she  conceived  it  was  to  prepare  her  children's 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  61 

souls  for  heaven  and  the  rest  of  them  for  governing  the 
British  Empire ;  to  which  end  she  aimed  at  producing  a  type 
of  character  which  was  a  skilful  blend  of  that  of  St.  Aloysius 
with  that  of  Nelson  and  Squire  Brown,  and  which  could 
be  recognized  at  any  time  and  in  any  corner  of  the  world  as 
Old  Ashburian. 

The  young  Briton  was  preparing  for  his  task  of  bearing  the 
White  Man's  Burden  by  stuffing  his  head  full  of  Latin  and 
Greek  Syntax  and  Prosody,  and  duly  impressing  upon  him 
the  importance  of  Variae  Lectiones.  If  he  asked  what  was 
the  use  of  these  dead  languages  to  him  he  was  told  that  they 
formed  the  bases  of  other  languages.  (But  as  he  never 
learnt  any  other  languages  but  French,  which  was  taught  by 
a  "  Froggie  "  and  treated  with  a  truly  British  contempt 
which  would  not  condescend  even  to  learn  the  pronunciation 
correctly,  the  function  of  the  basis  is  not  very  clear.)  He 
was  also  told  that  Latin  and  Greek  gave  him  culture,  but 
his  teachers  were  so  busy  impressing  on  him  the  correct  use 
of  the  Ablative  Absolute  and  the  Iota  Subscript  that  if  there 
was  anything  of  beauty  in  Euripides  or  wisdom  in  Plato  he 
had  to  find  it  out  for  himself.  (Which  he  never  did.) 

In  his  own  language  he  learned  by  heart  large  quantities 
of  selected  lyrics  and  passages  of  predigested  Shakespeare, 
and  carried  away  a  general  impression  that  Tennyson  is  the 
greatest  of  all  poets.  History  was  a  dull  tale  with  England 
as  hero,  the  rest  of  Europe  her  vassals,  and  France  the  villain 
of  the  piece.  As  for  geography,  he  acquired  a  vague  idea 
that  there  were  three  or  four  powerful  countries  in  Europe, 
but  Bulgaria,  Servia,  and  Croatia  were  not  even  names  to 
him;  while  he  had  an  intimate  knowledge  of  what  parts  of 
the  British  Empire  exported  indigo  or  imported  jute,  even 
though  his  idea  of  what  jute  is  was  somewhat  vague.  A 
little  elementary  science  was  thrown  in  at  one  stage  of  his 
training,  but  it  was  a  half-hearted  business,  which  was  but 
natural  in  a  school  where  the  names  of  the  great  scientists 
were  constantly  being  held  up  as  examples  of  unbelief  and 
infamy. 


62  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

It  was  unfortunate  for  the  victims  of  this  process  that  so 
few  of  them  had  occasion  to  earn  their  own  livings  in  after 
life,  for  it  fitted  them  for  nothing  better  than  the  running  of 
third  rate  second-hand  bookshops  on  inefficient  lines.  And  as 
for  the  Empire  of  which  they  were  to  be  the  props  the 
result  was  the  Battle  of  Mons.  (For  the  point  of  which 
observation  the  reader  is  invited  to  consult  some  private  sol- 
dier who  fought  there.) 

Religious  training  at  Ashbury  consisted  in  holding  up  St. 
Aloysius  as  a  model  and  Darwin  as  a  devil  to  a  lot  of  brats 
who  had  no  more  intention  of  following  the  one  than  of 
reading  the  other.  And  while  the  virtue  of  purity  was 
preached  with  almost  indecent  frequency,  truth,  charity, 
humility  and  forgiveness  received  but  cursory  mention.  But 
truth  to  tell,  Ashbury  herself  played  but  a  small  part  in 
framing  the  characters  of  her  alumni.  Far  more  important 
was  the  unwritten  law,  the  code  built  up  by  generations  of 
boys  —  similar  in  every  English  Public  School  —  to  break 
which  was  ruination. 

The  code  is  difficult  to  summarize,  but  when  thoroughly 
dissected  it  is  seen  to  consist  mainly  in  this;  that  to  differ 
from  the  herd  is  the  greatest  evil,  and  the  best  man  is  he 
who  conforms  best  to  type.  And  what  is  the  type?  The 
ideal  public  schoolboy  of  Tom  Brown's  Schooldays  does  not 
exist.  The  typical  public  school  boy  may  be  physically  cour- 
ageous; morally  he  is  the  reverse,  as  his  very  type-worship 
shows.  He  may  be  honourable  in  his  dealings  with  his 
friends ;  he  is  nothing  of  the  kind  in  dealing  with  those  who 
are  not  his  friends.  And  for  the  rest  he  is  ignorant,  narrow- 
minded,  arrogant,  foul-mouthed  and  blasphemous.  He  has 
no  code  of  ethics,  but  he  is  by  nature  a  conservative  ever  dis- 
trustful of  what  is  new,  firmly  believing  that  what  is  is  best. 
He  is  not  religious,  yet  he  would  not  dream  of  professing 
Atheism  (which  is  not  "  the  thing  "),  but  he  may  bully  the 
weak,  cheat  in  exams,  blaspheme,  or  talk  filth,  and  think 
none  the  worse  of  himself. 

Ideas  he  looks  upon  with  suspicion,  as  sand  in  the  smooth- 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  63 

running  machinery  of  the  Type.  He  hears  vaguely  of  such 
things  as  labour  unrest  and  though  he  may  look  up  a  few 
"  points "  on  the  subject  for  his  speech  in  the  Debating 
Society,  he  puts  it  all  down  to  "  discontent  "  and  "  disloy- 
alty," and  worries  no  more  about  such  unpleasant  subjects. 
Should  any  exceptional  boy  hold  views  running  counter  to 
those  generally  accepted  he  comes  under  the  imputation  of 
not  being  a  gentleman,  the  penalty  for  which  is  ostentatious 
ignoring  or  even  ragging.  At  a  public  school  it  is  better  to 
be  immoral  than  a  Socialist. 

Another  serious  crime  from  the  Ashburian  view-point  is 
poverty.  M.  Moulin,  the  assistant  French  master,  was  poor. 
It  was  whispered  that  he  had  but  one  suit  of  clothes:  cer- 
tainly he  was  never  seen  in  any  other.  It  was  accordingly 
decided  that  the  miscreant  must  be  punished,  and  six  valiant 
Rhetoricians  penetrated  to  his  room  in  his  absence,  where 
they  burnt  his  books  and  collars,  smashed  his  pictures,  cut 
up  the  tyres  of  his  bicycle,  and  poured  ink  into  his  chest  of 
drawers.  If  a  boy  was  suspected  of  falling  short  of  the 
general  standard  of  wealth,  some  one  would  question  him 
publicly  about  his  pocket  money;  or  a  visit  would  be  paid 
to  his  wardrobe,  when  the  screamingly  funny  information 
would  run  through  the  school  that  so-and-so  had  but  two 
suits  of  clothes,  or  was  deficient  in  underclothing. 

Physical  deformity  was  not  so  much  a  crime  as  a  source  of 
amusement.  Poor  Stickelback,  who  had  a  cleft  palate,  heard 
his  attempts  at  speech  mimicked  at  every  turn,  and  Wilson, 
who  squinted,  was  invariably  addressed  as  "  Swivel  Eye." 
It  was  also  a  standing  joke  to  say:  "  Wilson,  look  here. — 
Oh,  I  forgot.  You  can't." 

Lowness  of  origin  was  yet  another  failing  in  Ashburian 
opinion.  Business  people  were  considered  outsiders,  and  pro- 
fessional men  were  merely  tolerated,  the  ideal  being  the 
man  who  did  nothing.  Bolton,  whose  father  kept  a  shop 
in  Warrington,  was  made  to  feel  this.  He  led  a  lonely 
existence  outside  the  pale  of  good  society,  and  none  would 
speak  to  him  except  the  good-natured,  like  Willoughby, 


64  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

or  the  democratic,  like  Bernard.  To  hear  a  group  of  Ash- 
burians  discussing  the  origins  of  some  of  their  questionable 
school  mates  reminded  one  of  a  crowd  of  old  maids  talking 
scandal  over  afternoon  tea,  and  wonder  whether  the  manly 
healthy  British  boy  existed  outside  the  imagination  of  story- 
tellers and  Imperialistic  journalists. 

The  English  public  school  boy  is  a  conservative  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave.  He  is  a  conservative  even  at  fifteen. 
From  the  generous  political  emotions  which  rise  in  every 
breast  all  the  world  over  at  the  period  of  adolescence  he 
appears  to  be  entirely  exempt.  He  is  quite  satisfied  with 
himself  and  the  world  which  is  his  setting,  and  he  does  not 
wish  to  be  disturbed.  Perhaps  it  is  part  of  this  conserva- 
tivism  that  he  objects  to  enthusiasm  of  any  kind.  The 
enthusiast  on  any  subject  he  considers  rather  a  fool,  and  bored 
indifference  is  the  fashionable  pose.  Like  all  boys  he  de- 
spises the  brainworker,  but  he  alone  prefers  blase  brilliancy 
to  keenness  and  hard  training  in  football  and  athletics. 
There  is  more  than  a  suspicion  of  fear  in  this  contempt,  for 
it  is  born  of  a  hazy  notion  that  enthusiasm  is  somewhat  akin 
to  Restlessness,  and  as  every  one  knows  Restlessness  is  what 
the  public  schoolman  in  after  life  has  most  to  dread. 

Imperialism  is  inborn  in  the  public  school  boy.  He  will 
verbally  deny  that  Might  is  Right,  but  he  always  acts  on  the 
assumption  that  it  is.  The  big  boy  does  what  he  likes; 
he  gets  precedence  everywhere;  the  weak  must  get  out  of 
his  way ;  and  no  one  questions  his  right  to  these  prerogatives. 
Nay,  if  he  does  not  take  full  advantage  of  his  strength  the 
weak  despise  him  and  do  not  hesitate  to  show  it.  This  be- 
lief in  the  right  of  the  strong  he  shows  in  such  crude  politics 
as  he  may  give  expression  to  in  youth  and  act  upon  in  later 
life.  "  Of  course  it's  right  to  conquer  other  countries,"  he 
will  tell  you.  "  Nations  must  expand.  It  would  be  a  queer 
world  if  countries  couldn't  grow  and  get  richer."  The  idea 
that  conquest  might  be  wrong  never  even  enters  into  his  head. 
Well,  the  child  is  father  to  the  man,  and  any  Englishman 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  65 

will  tell  you  that  the  public  schools  have  made  England 
what  she  is. 

This  much  of  Ashbury  —  and  of  all  English  Public 
Schools,  for  Ashbury  is  but  one  of  many  and  an  improvement 
on  most  of  them  —  is  definite  and  tangible.  It  is  living ; 
harshly,  narrowly,  viciously  living;  but  still  understandably 
and  palpably  living.  But  underneath  the  turbulent  ever- 
changing  surface  of  that  life  flowed  a  perpetual  poisonous 
sluggish  current  of  nasty  sneering  thought  to  which  nothing 
was  sacred.  It  was  offensive  yet  indefinable;  all-pervading 
and  yet  elusive ;  and  its  noxious  miasma  tainted  and  vitiated 
the  whole  atmosphere.  Herein  is  the  germ  of  death  which 
is  slowly  and  surely  killing  the  whole  system. 

Such  was  the  life  sheltered  within  the  fine  old  walls  of 
Ashbury,  cloaked  by  her  beauty  and  bolstered  up  by  self- 
deception,  self-contradiction,  fine  phrases  and  the  glory  of 
tradition:  a  life  of  great  possibility  and  mean  achievement; 
of  plausible  aspiration  and  damnable  purpose;  of  noble  pre- 
tension and  hideous  reality. 

5 

Into  this  topsy-turvy  world  Bernard  stepped  full  of  zest 
and  hope.  He  had  high  standards  of  manliness,  acquired 
mainly  from  Tom  Brown's  Schooldays,  which  he  fondly  be- 
lieved must  hold  sway  in  a  great  school  like  Ashbury. 
Bullying  and  lying  were,  he  felt  sure,  offences  which  would 
be  treated  with  the  contempt  they  deserved  and  though 
he  felt  a  little  disconcerted  by  Willoughby's  casual  attitude 
towards  the  Musgrave  episode,  yet  he  told  himself  that  Mus- 
grave  must  after  all  be  an  exceptional  person.  It  was  not 
long  before  Bernard  discovered  that  his  high  hopes  were 
vain. 

At  Ashbury,  if  a  boy  is  popular  he  can  do  nothing  wrong, 
if  he  is  unpopular  he  can  do  nothing  right.  If  Sugden,  the 
dull  and  boring,  were  to  be  found  bullying  a  smaller  boy, 
some  noble  minded  hero,  or  heroes,  full  of  righteous  indigna- 


66  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

tion  would  come  to  the  victim's  rescue  and  knock  his  per- 
secutor down;  but  Smithers,  the  popular  sport  and  hu- 
mourist, could  kick  a  small  boy  out  of  his  way  and  be  told : 
"  Quite  right.  He's  a  cheeky  kid."  Hence  it  was  that 
Tomkins  and  Tracy-Sidbotham,  who  took  an  instant  dislike 
to  Bernard,  could  bully  him  with  impunity.  The  cause  of 
this  dislike  Bernard  never  found  out,  and  probably  they  were 
unaware  of  it  themselves;  but  so  far  as  it  was  not  causeless 
it  must  have  sprung  from  a  feeling  that  this  boy  in  his  very 
being  violated  the  code.  Tomkins  and  Tracy-Sidbotham 
would  not  have  been  accused  of  this  crime  by  their  worst 
enemies.  They  were,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  typical  Ashburians. 
Tomkins  was  gross  and  truculent;  Tracy-Sidbotham  slender 
and  sneering.  They  were  in  the  class  above  Bernard's  and 
two  years  his  senior  in  age.  Tracy-Sidbotham's  persecution 
was  occasional  and  mainly  verbal,  except  when  a  retort  from 
Bernard  called  for  suppression  by  violence.  Tomkins'  at- 
tacks on  the  other  hand  were  perpetual,  and  consisted  in 
smacking  him  on  the  head  with  a  book  or  tripping  him  up 
at  every  possible  opportunity  —  a  procedure  which  infuriated 
Bernard  not  so  much  by  the  pain  or  annoyance  caused  him 
as  by  its  utter  uselessness.  He  soon  came  to  hate  Tomkins 
with  a  murderous  hate,  the  one  personal  hatred  of  his  life. 

One  day  as  Bernard  was  going  along  a  gallery  Tomkins 
came  up  behind  him  and  for  the  fiftieth  time  banged  him  on 
the  head. 

"  You  bloody  fool!  "  said  Bernard,  turning  on  him.  Some- 
how his  individualism  had  not  saved  him  from  adopting  the 
prevailing  dialect. 

"You  dare  give  cheek  to  me?"  demanded  Tomkins, 
striking  him  again. 

"  You  were  asking  for  it,  you  cursed  ass." 

This  was  too  much  for  Tomkins.  He  seized  Bernard's 
arm  and  twisted  it.  Thereupon  the  pent  up  fury  of  months 
instantaneously  exploded,  and  Bernard's  free  fist  shot  out 
and  caught  his  tormentor  under  the  eye. 


YOUNG  ENGLANET  67 

"  Fight !  "  shouted  some  one,  and  an  eager  crowd  gathered 
round. 

There  was  no  story-book  hero  to  interpose  and  point  to 
the  inequality  of  the  combatants.  Tomkins  advanced  con- 
fidently on  his  victim,  who  put  up  his  hands  weakly  in  a 
futile  effort  at  defence.  His  rage  was  of  the  fierce  short- 
lived type,  and  without  it  he  had  little  fighting  spirit.  Tom- 
kins  would  have  pulverized  him  in  a  minute  but  for  the 
timely  arrival  of  a  prefect. 

"  Nix !  "  said  a  voice,  and  the  crowd  dispersed,  the  prin- 
cipals mingling  therein  as  inconspicuously  as  possible. 

Bernard  dreaded  the  vengeance  of  Tomkins,  who,  he  no- 
ticed with  a  certain  amount  of  satisfaction,  bore  a  black 
bruise  under  his  left  eye.  In  this  predicament  he  looked 
about  for  Willoughby,  but  failed  to  find  him  before  after- 
noon class. 

"  I  say,"  whispered  Willoughby,  "  your  ear's  bleeding." 

Bernard  mopped  it  with  his  handkerchief  and  gave  Wil- 
loughby a  whispered  account  of  what  had  happened. 

"  Tomkins  is  a  bleeding  rotter,"  said  Willoughby.  "  He 
used  to  be  the  same  to  me  once.  Look  here,  you  stick  with 
me  and  Murray  next  rec.  and  we'll  see  what'll  happen." 

"  Right  oh." 

"  Willoughby  and  Lascelles  stop  talking  and  get  twelve 
ferulas  each." 

Willoughby  grinned,  but  Bernard's  heart  almost  stopped 
beating.  It  was  his  first  punishment. 

At  tea  Willoughby  told  Murray  Bernard's  story,  and 
Murray  said: 

"  Look  here,  let's  smash  him  up,  the  three  of  us." 

This  was  agreed,  and  they  descended  to  the  recreation 
room.  Bernard  had  no  fear  here,  for  the  enemy  was  in  the 
second  line,  and  during  the  rest  of  that  day  by  careful  scout- 
ing Bernard  kept  clear  of  him.  But  another  ordeal  awaited 
him  in  the  evening  when  he  and  Willoughby  took  their 
places  in  the  queue  outside  the  prefect's  room  waiting  for 


68  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

punishment.  Three  big  boys  and  a  small  boy  were  there 
already.  The  prefect  came  along,  fumbling  for  his  keys. 
He  opened  the  door,  and  the  first  boy  followed  him  inside. 
Twelve  resounding  cracks  rang  out,  and  the  victim  emerged, 
looking  deliberately  careless.  The  second  boy  was  less 
stoical,  blowing  upon  his  swollen  fingers  as  he  walked  away. 
The  third  boy  imitated  the  first.  It  was  the  small  boy's 
turn  next,  but  he  hesitated,  looking  at  Willoughby.  Im- 
perialism, as  we  have  said,  is  inborn  in  English  boys.  The 
right  of  might  is  never  disputed,  and  this  little  fellow  as- 
sumed that  his  right  of  priority  would  count  for  nothing 
since  he  was  not  big  enough  to  defend  it. 

"  Go  on,  kid,"  said  Willoughby.  "  Get  it  over,"  and  the 
youngster  hurried  in  gratefully.  .  .  v- 

"  Your  turn  now,"  said  Willoughby,  and  Bernard  entered 
the  lion's  den. 

"  Stiff?  "  inquired  Willoughby  when  all  was  over. 

"  Easy  as  hell,"  replied  Bernard,  clenching  his  teeth  with 
pain. 

Next  day  Tomkins  had  to  be  faced.  At  first  recreation 
he  strolled  up  to  the  three  arm  in  arm  with  Tracy-Sid- 
botham. 

"  Lascelles,"  commanded  Tomkins,  "  come  here  and  be 
kicked  for  your  bloody  cheek." 

"  Go  to  hell,"  said  Bernard. 

"  My  God,  wait  till  I  get  you." 

"  Go  to  blazes  out  of  this,  the  pair  of  you,"  said  Murray 
fiercely. 

"  God,  these  blasted  kids  are  too  bloody  cheeky  for  any- 
thing," drawled  Tracy-Sidbotham.  "  Come  on,  Tomkins, 
and  toe  their  fundaments." 

At  this  point  Willoughby  took  the  offensive  and  kicked 
Tomkins  with  all  his  might,  and  Bernard  followed  up  with 
a  punch  in  the  solar  plexus.  The  languid  Sidbotham  be- 
gan a  scuffle  for  form's  sake  with  Murray,  and  then  the  two 
big  boys  beat  a  retreat,  Tomkins  vowing  vengeance  and  Sid- 
botham covering  his  cowardice  with  a  sneer. 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  69 

After  this  episode  Tomkins  discreetly  ignored  Bernard. 

"  I  don't  care  what  you  say,  Willoughby,"  remarked  Ber- 
nard, "  what  with  Musgrave  and  Tomkins  and  Tracy-Sid- 
botham,  this  place  is  the  hell  of  a  hole." 

None  the  less  school  life  still  held  many  pleasures.  At 
the  half-term  examinations  Bernard  retained  his  medal,  and 
the  club-matches  which  commenced  during  this  term  opened 
up  new  interests.  The  club-matches  are  Ashbury's  substi- 
tute for  the  House  matches  of  other  public  schools.  In  each 
of  the  three  Lines  into  which  the  whole  school  of  four  hun- 
dred boys  is  divided  a  shield  is  offered  for  competition  be- 
tween clubs  picked  by  six  prominent  players.  The  clubs 
average  about  twenty-five  members  each,  including  every 
type  from  members  of  the  Line  Eleven  to  Third  Match  men 
and  medical  dispensationers,  from  among  whom  the  cap- 
tain selects  his  team.  Bernard  was  picked  by  Sedgwick, 
whose  club  was  admittedly  a  favourite  for  the  shield,  in- 
cluding as  it  did  two  Third  Line  Eleven  men,  Willoughby 
and  Lumsden,  several  First  Match  men,  and  some  of  the 
cream  of  Second  Match.  Before  selecting  his  team  Sedg- 
wick instituted  a  Possible  v.  Probables  match  between  the 
members  of  the  club.  Bernard  played  right  half-back  for 
the  Possibles,  but  failed  to  distinguish  himself,  his  light 
weight  making  him  no  obstacle  to  the  opposing  left  outside. 
After  the  match,  however,  Sedgwick  came  up  to  him  and 
said: 

"  I'm  going  to  put  you  on  the  team." 

"  Afraid  I  wasn't  much  use  today,"  said  Bernard. 

"  You  hadn't  much  chance.  You  can  play  all  right.  I'll 
put  you  on  the  wing  and  then  you  can  use  your  legs." 

But  Bernard's  legs  were  destined  to  be  of  less  service  to 
his  team  than  his  head.  With  the  eye  of  a  strategist  he 
watched  the  course  of  the  game  and  thought  out  dispositions 
and  tactics  whereby  the  players  might  be  welded  into  a 
coherent  whole.  These  he  laid  before  Sedgwick,  who  after 
the  preliminary  hesitation  that  might  be  expected  from  a 
veteran  footballer,  eventually  put  them  into  tentative  prac- 


70  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

tice.  Thereafter  he  had  a  brilliant  run  of  successes  and 
ended  by  carrying  off  the  shield.  His  own  magnificent  play 
and  the  strength  of  his  team  were  universally  credited  with 
the  achievement  and  all  his  attempts  to  secure  recognition  of 
Bernard's  services  were  put  down  to  heroic  modesty  and 
laughed  to  scorn.  Football  lost  much  of  its  interest  for 
Bernard  after  this. 

6 

They  never  made  an  Ashburian  of  Bernard.  He  despised 
St.  Aloysius ;  he  never  forgave  Nelson  for  "  Kiss  me,  Hardy  " ; 
and  he  regarded  Squire  Brown  as  an  old  fool.  He  never 
conformed  to  the  code,  and  it  was  even  whispered  that  he 
approved  of  the  French  Revolution  (which  of  course  all 
true  Ashburians  look  upon  with  horror,  as  Catholics  and 
English  gentlemen  should).  Moreover  he  refused  to  accept 
the  dogma  that  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was  won  on  the  play- 
ing fields  of  Eton.  His  heterodox  essay  on  this  subject  is 
still  remembered  with  dismay  at  Ashbury. 

It  was  in  his  second  year  at  the  school  and  he  was  ap- 
proaching his  fourteenth  birthday.  His  class-master,  Mr. 
Bumpleigh,  was  a  dull,  conscientious,  overworked  man  who 
feared  Bernard  more  than  all  the  rowdies  of  the  class  on 
account  of  his  cruelly  obvious  contempt  for  his  intellect. 
(Bernard's  one  intolerance  was  for  stupidity,  and  from  thir- 
teen years  of  age  to  sixteen,  Boy  is  at  his  cruellest.)  It  was 
Mr.  Bumpleigh's  habit  to  set  a  weekly  English  essay,  and  to 
read  out  and  comment  upon  the  themes  sent  in,  hoping 
thereby  to  impart  instruction  and  guidance  for  the  future, 
but  in  reality  giving  the  boys  light  amusement  and  a  much- 
appreciated  respite  from  work. 

"  Osgood,  your  essay  may  be  excellent  for  all  I  know, 
but  your  handwriting  is  like  the  track  of  a  beetle,  wandering 
over  the  page,  so  I  couldn't  read  it.  I'll  have  to  get  you  a 
headline  copy  book.  Rumpworth,  your  ideas  are  good,  but 
your  grammar  would  bear  improvement,  and  you've  spoilt 
the  effect  of  what  would  otherwise  have  been  an  excellent 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  71 

final  sentence  by  using  slang.  '  When  all  is  taken  into  con- 
sideration one  thing  stands  out  clear,  that  Waterloo  was  a 
soldier's  victory  won  by  the  men  of  England  made  tough 
by  games  over  the  softies  of  France.'  '  Degenerate  sons ' 
would  sound  better  there;  don't  you  think  so,  Rump- 
worth  ?  " 

"  Yessir,"  said  Rumpworth. 

"  Ledbury's  essay  is  so  good,"  went  on  Mr.  Bumpleigh, 
"  that  I  shall  read  it  to  you  in  full." 

There  was  suppressed  excitement  in  the  class  at  this,  for 
Ledbury  had  copied  his  essay  word  for  word  from  a  book  on 
essay-writing  which  he  had  picked  up  at  home,  containing 
sample  essays  on  stock  subjects  such  as  Hobbies,  A  Country 
Walk,  Friendship,  and  the  like,  and  every  one  knew  of  the 
trick.  Suppressed  laughter  punctuated  Mr.  Bumpleigh's 
reading  of  the  platitudinous  disquisition,  which  was  about 
as  much  in  Ledbury's  style  as  Paradise  Lost.  Mr.  Bump- 
leigh, in  a  tone  he  fondly  imagined  to  be  scathing,  told  them 
that  their  minds  must  be  deficient  if  a  piece  of  beautiful  writ- 
ing roused  them  to  ridicule,  but  almost  simultaneously  Led- 
bury's self-control  gave  way  and  he  exploded  with  laugh- 
ter. 

"  What's  the  meaning  of  this?  "  thundered  Mr.  Bump- 
leigh. 

Ledbury,  slow  of  wit,  decided  on  the  spur  of  the  moment 
to  tell  the  truth.  It  frequently  paid. 

"  Please,  sir,  I  copied  it  out  of  a  book." 

"Dear  me!  I  might  have  known.  Why  did  you  do  that, 
Ledbury  ?  " 

"  I  couldn't  think  of  anything  to  say  myself,  sir,"  said 
Ledbury. 

"  Try  and  use  the  brains  God  gave  you,  Ledbury.  Well, 
you  owned  up,  so  I'll  say  no  more  about  it,"  and  Mr.  Bump- 
leigh turned  to  another  essay. 

"  '  Three  quarters  of  the  British  Army  at  Waterloo  was 
Irish  and  the  other  quarter  Scotch.'  Well,  Mallow,  I  think 
even  you  will  agree  that  that's  a  little  exaggerated." 


72  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

There  was  a  grim  look  on  Mr.  Bumpleigh's  face  as  he 
picked  up  the  next  essay. 

"  Lascelles,"  he  said  gravely,  "  you  may  think  this  kind 
of  thing  funny,  but  it  isn't  gentlemanly.  An  Ashbury  boy 
should  be  ashamed  to  write  such  stuff." 

The  gist  of  Bernard's  essay  was  that  the  title  was  an 
implication  that  the  Battle  of  Waterloo  had  been  won  by 
the  skill  of  the  British  officers,  whereas  the  victory  was  really 
due  to  the  stubbornness  of  the  British  rank  and  file  and  the 
good  marching  of  the  Prussians.  This  paved  the  way  for 
a  strongly  Republican  thesis  which  wound  up  the  essay. 

"  I  didn't  mean  it  to  be  funny,"  said  Bernard.  "  I  meant 
every  word  of  it." 

"  So  much  the  worse,"  said  Mr.  Bumpleigh,  handing  back 
the  theme  book.  Underneath  the  essay  was  a  large  blue 
Nought. 

After  class  Bernard  was  surrounded  by  the  curious  and 
overwhelmed  with  questions. 

"  Why  was  Bumf  ace  so  shirty?  " 

"  What  did  you  write  ?  " 

"I  said  the  battle  was  really  won  on  the  fields  of  York- 
shire and  in  the  slums  of  London." 

"  What  bloody  rubbish !  "  exclaimed  Rump  worth.  "  I 
suppose  you  thought  that  clever?  " 

"  Damn  sight  truer  than  the  subject  anyway,"  said  Ber- 
nard. 

"  Rot,"  said  Ledbury  with  tremendous  scorn. 

There  was  a  general  feeling  that  Bernard  was  not  very 
good  form. 

"  If  you  think  things  like  that  you've  no  business  coming  to 
Ashbury,"  some  one  remarked. 

The  last  word  had  been  said  on  the  discussion.  Every 
one  felt  that  his  own  opinion  had  been  spoken. 

Shortly  after  this  altercation  Bernard  happened  to  come 
across  Mallow. 

"  I  say,  Mallow,"  he  cried,  "  what  was  that  awful  rubbish 
you  stuck  into  your  essay?  " 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  73 

"  What  awful  rubbish  ?  "  inquired  Mallow  surlily. 

"  That  about  the  Irish  at  Waterloo." 

"What  of  it?" 

"  Well,  in  the  first  place  it  wasn't  true." 

"  I  only  exaggerated  a  bit.  Nearly  half  the  British  Army 
was  Irish  as  a  matter  of  fact." 

"  Well,  I  won't  quarrel  over  that,  since  I  don't  know 
enough  about  it.  What  I'm  after  is  the  reason  why  you 
make  such  a  fuss  about  it.  What  on  earth  does  it  matter 
even  if  it  is  true?  " 

"  Why  wouldn't  it  matter?  " 

"  What  difference  does  it  make  whether  they  were  Irish 
or  English?  Aren't  they  all  the  same?" 

Mallow  seemed  to  collapse  at  this  question. 

"  Great  Scott!  "  he  gasped.     "  Do  you  mean  that?  " 

"Keep  your  hair  on,"  said  Bernard.     "What's  up?" 

"  Well,"  said  Mallow,  as  if  giving  Bernard  up  entirely, 
"  I  knew  you  were  a  West  Briton,  but  I  didn't  think  you 
were  as  ignorant  as  that.  You're  no  better  than  an  Eng- 
lishman, God  help  you." 

He  went  away,  leaving  Bernard  amused  and  puzzled. 

7 

"  I  tell  you  what,  Willoughby,  I  can't  stand  St.  Aloy- 
sius." 

Willoughby  looked  rather  shocked.  He  liked  Bernard, 
but  found  him  a  trifle  disconcerting  at  times,  and  when 
Bernard  came  out  with  abrupt  heresies  like  this  he  was  at  a 
loss  how  to  receive  them.  At  the  present  announcement  he 
merely  stared  and  said  nothing. 

"  Yes,"  went  on  Bernard,  "  I'm  fed  up  with  having  him 
dinned  into  us  morning,  noon  and  night,  and  now  that  I've 
read  his  life  I'm  more  fed  up  than  ever." 

"  You  shouldn't  talk  like  that  about  a  Saint,"  said  Wil- 
loughby. 

"  Saint!  What's  a  Saint?  Is  it  saintly  to  go  about  the 
world  with  your  eyes  stuck  on  the  ground?  Is  it  saintly 


74  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

to  half -starve  yourself  so  that  you  die  young?  I  call  that 
slow-suicide.  Is  it  saintly  to  be  afraid  to  remain  alone  with 
your  own  mother?  I  call  that  having  a  dirty  mind." 

"  That's  a  rotten  thing  to  say  about  a  Saint,  Bernard.  I 
don't  like  it." 

"  You've  read  his  life  yourself.  Didn't  you  see  every  word 
I've  said  there  in  black  and  white?  " 

"  Well,  yes." 

"  And  you  think  these  things  are  signs  of  goodness?  " 

"  I  suppose  they  must  be." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  you  think  a  chap  would  be  right  to 
think  like  that  about  his  mother  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.     I  don't  worry  about  these  things." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  you  can  go  on  praying  to  a  Saint 
with  a  mind  like  that?  " 

"  I  don't  do  such  a  lot  of  praying,  you  know." 

"  That's  not  the  point.  Do  you  admire  a  chap  who  thinks 
that  way  about  his  mother?  " 

"  I  tell  you  I  don't  bother  about  such  things." 

"  But  you  should  bother." 

"  Look  here,  Bernard,  if  you  want  to  argue  about  theology 
try  it  on  a  J.  Come  on  to  the  playground." 

Bernard  saw  that  further  discussion  with  his  friend  was 
useless,  but  he  seized  an  early  opportunity  of  tackling  Father 
Bowman  the  Chaplain.  He  would  have  liked  to  continue 
with  the  question  of  St.  Aloysius'  relations  with  his  mother 
but  abstained  from  doing  so  from  a  feeling  that  this  aspect 
would  not  make  much  appeal  to  a  celibate;  moreover  he 
had  a  fear  lest  Father  Bowman  might  decline  discussion  on 
such  a  delicate  matter  altogether.  Accordingly  he  com- 
menced in  a  non-committal  way. 

"  Tell  me,  father,  why  is  St.  Aloysius  the  patron  of 
youth  ?  " 

Father  Bowman  was  a  saintly-looking  man,  white-haired, 
and  of  serene  manner  and  appearance.  Doubt,  one  felt,  had 
never  disturbed  those  placid  features.  He  always  professed 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  75 

himself  ready  to  answer  questions;  indeed,  he  invited  them. 
But  never  had  any  question  been  submitted  to  him  that  a 
few  words  and  an  encouraging  smile  had  failed  to  dispose 
of.  This  he  felt  sure  was  one  of  them,  and  the  kindly 
tolerant  smile  and  lambent  voice  were  ready  to  be  poured 
like  oil  upon  the  seething  waves  of  puerile  doubt. 

"  Because  he  was  young  himself,  my  child,  and  was  a 
model  of  those  virtues  which  youth  should  aim  at." 

"  Then  are  we  supposed  to  imitate  him  in  our  lives?  " 

"  Certainly;  at  least  so  far  as  it  is  possible  for  us  to  do 
so." 

"  Then  should  we  keep  our  eyes  always  on  the  ground, 
and  scourge  ourselves,  and  —  and  never  look  at  women?" 

"  Oh,  no.     That  is  not  expected  of  everybody." 

"  Who  is  it  expected  of,  then  ?  " 

"  It  is  only  expected  of  those  who  feel  called  to  a  life  of 
perfection." 

Father  Bowman  felt  that  the  argument  was  finished  and 
made  as  if  to  move  away,  but  Bernard  was  persistent. 

"  But  shouldn't  we  all  try  for  perfection?  "  he  said. 

"  We  all  cannot,"  replied  Father  Bowman,  a  IHtle  impa- 
tiently. 

Bernard  felt  the  thread  of  the  argument  slipping  from  his 
grasp,  so  he  plunged  headlong  for  facts. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  if  the  prefect  found  me  scourging  my- 
self in  the  dormitory,  I  know  jolly  well  I'd  get  into  a 
row." 

"  Yes.  It's  a  college  rule  that  when  you  go  to  the  dormi- 
tory you  must  undress  at  once  and  get  into  bed.  Obedience 
to  rules  comes  before  voluntary  austerities." 

"  But  even  if  I  wasn't  breaking  a  rule  I'd  be  told  I  was  an 
ass  and  made  chuck  it." 

Father  Bowman  sighed  impatiently. 

"  It  all  depends  on  your  motive,"  he  said. 

"  I  don't  feel  that  you've  answered  my  question,  Father/' 
Bernard  reproached  him. 


76  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Don't  worry  your  head  about  speculations  like  that," 
said  Father  Bowman  with  his  complacent  smile.  "  Run  off 
to  the  playground  and  kick  a  ball  about." 

Bernard  moved  off  pensively.  Doubt  was  hammering  at 
the  gates  of  his  soul. 

"  What  sort  of  a  church  is  it,"  he  pondered,  "  that  puts 
St.  Aloysius  above  Newton  and  George  Washington?  " 

"  Clever  little  chap  that  pupil  of  yours,  Lascelles,"  said 
Father  Bowman  to  Mr.  Bumpleigh.  "  But  he  thinks  too 
much  about  religious  questions.  Not  good  at  his  age.  I'm 
afraid  for  his  faith." 

"  He  has  very  revolutionary  ideas,"  said  Mr.  Bumpleigh, 
which,  though  he  knew  it  not,  meant  that  Bernard  had  the 
faith  that  moves  mountains. 


There  was  a  boy  called  Reppington  in  the  class  below 
Bernard's  who  violated  the  code  even  more  thoroughly  than 
our  hero  though  less  flagrantly.  He  was  a  quiet  retiring 
youth  who  spoke  little  and  moved  through  life  in  a  perpetual 
dream.  He  had  mousy  hair,  large  ears,  and  ungainly  feet, 
and  the  natural  ugliness  of  his  face  was  enhanced  by  a  pair 
of  huge  glasses,  over  which  he  peered  timidly  at  the  tu- 
multuous world.  His  was  a  hard  lot,  masters  and  boys 
equally  despising  him,  for  he  took  no  interest  either  in  play 
or,  outside  mathematics,  in  work.  Mechanics  was  the  one 
thing  he  cared  for,  a  taste  little  catered  for  at  Public  Schools. 
However,  Ashbury  had  a  well-equipped  carpenter's  shop, 
and  here  Reppington  spent  most  of  his  time,  dreaming,  ex- 
perimenting, and  constructing. 

Reppington  even  at  fourteen  showed  signs  of  being  a  me- 
chanical genius,  and  the  fruit  of  months  of  toil  and  patience 
was  a  working  model  of  a  steam  engine.  The  presence  of 
this  wonder  in  the  carpenter's  shop  was  soon  known  to  the 
school,  and  the  little  engine  at  first  attracted  a  good  deal  of 
honest  admiration.  Reppington  became  quite  a  celebrity, 
and  was  often  seen  surrounded  by  admirers  whose  praise  of 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  77 

his  handiwork  made  his  eyes  beam  behind  his  spectacles  with 
happiness,  like  a  young  mother  being  congratulated  on  her 
offspring. 

But  the  Code  had  zealous  defenders  at  Ashbury,  and  none 
more  zealous  than  in  Bernard's  class.  When  the  news  of 
Reppington's  achievement  reached  them  Rumpworth  and 
Ledbury  and  Lashworthy  and  Sherringham  and  other  de- 
fenders of  tradition  held  a  council  of  war. 

"  This  business  can't  go  on,"  said  Ledbury. 

"  It's  a  disgrace  to  the  school,"  said  Lashworthy. 

"  Playing  trains !  "  snorted  Sherringham.  "  We'll  have 
kids  coming  here  soon  with  dolls  or  teddy-bears." 

"  It's  got  to  be  stopped,"  said  Rumpworth. 

"  How  is  it  to  be  stopped  ?  "  said  Ledbury. 

"  Kick  his  bum  and  tell  him  to  chuck  being  a  kid,"  some 
one  suggested. 

"  Take  the  bloody  engine  from  him,"  proposed  Rump- 
worth. 

"  Come  on,  boys,  he's  probably  playing  with  it  now," 
cried  Sherringham,  and  the  half  dozen  of  them  made  a  rush 
for  the  carpenter's  shop. 

In  the  carpenter's  shop  Reppington  was  eagerly  and 
proudly  explaining  the  workings  of  his  engine  to  Bernard, 
who  listened  with  great  interest. 

"  He  loves  this  thing,"  Bernard  observed  to  himself. 

He  was  about  to  go  away  when  Sherringham  entered  at 
the  head  of  his  retainers.  Sherringham  approached  Rep- 
pington with  that  smile  half  assertive  half  sheepish  which 
Bernard  detested.  The  Ashbury  smile  he  called  it,  for  it 
symbolized  a  great  portion  of  the  Ashbury  mind. 
s"  Let's  see  the  engine,  Repp,"  said  Sherringham. 

Reppington  indicated  his  treasure.  Instantly  with  a 
sweep  of  his  hand  Sherringham  knocked  it  to  the  floor  and 
hacked  at  it  with  his  heel. 

"  Sherringham !  "  cried  Reppington,  making  a  vain  at- 
tempt to  rescue  his  toy. 

"  Shut  your  mouth,"  said  Rumpworth,  shoving  him  away. 


78  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

The  suddenness  of  Sherringham's  action  had  taken  Ber- 
nard by  surprise,  and  this  vision  of  callous  cruelty  left  him 
for  a  moment  paralysed  with  anger.  Reppington  was  gaz- 
ing helplessly  with  tear-blinded  eyes  at  the  wreckage  of  his 
engine,  which  Sherringham  kicked  over  to  Lashworthy,  who 
kicked  it  into  the  fireplace.  Suddenly  Bernard  stepped  up 
to  Sherringham,  breathing  hard. 

"  You  beastly  swine,"  he  said. 

"  Shut  up  and  mind  your  own  business,"  growled  Sher- 
ringham. 

"  Will  you  fight?  "  demanded  Bernard. 

"  Not  with  a  bloody  outsider  like  you,"  sneered  Sherring- 
ham. 

Bernard  struck  him  across  the  face  with  his  open  palm. 
Sherringham  stepped  back  apace  and  clenched  his  fists,  whilst 
the  blood  flooded  the  injured  cheek. 

"  Smash  him,  Sherry!  "  cried  Lashworthy. 

"  Make  a  ring,"  shouted  Rumpworth. 

Immediately  every  one  sprang  into  action.  The  furni- 
ture was  cleared  away  from  one  end  of  the  shop,  and  a  ring 
was  made,  which,  owing  to  the  narrowness  of  the  room,  was 
bounded  on  three  sides  by  walls,  whilst  the  fourth  consisted 
of  the  spectators  sitting  on  tables  and  benches.  In  the 
centre  were  the  combatants:  Sherringham,  gross  and  un- 
gainly; Bernard  slim  and  graceful.  Sherringham  was  by 
a  few  months  the  elder;  slightly  taller;  and  a  good  deal 
heavier;  but  Bernard  as  a  compensation  had  science,  being 
a  member  of  the  boxing  club.  Well-grown  healthy  boys  of 
fifteen  both  of  them  they  seemed  fairly  matched  and  the 
spectators  waited  keenly  for  what  must  prove  a  hard  battle. 
Bernard  glanced  round  at  them  once.  He  was  fighting  the 
cause  of  the  weak  against  the  strong  but  save  for  the  boy 
he  was  defending  all  present  were  backing  his  opponent. 

"  Time,"  said  Rumpworth,  who  had  appointed  himself 
referee. 

Bernard  came  rapidly  into  action  and  got  in  two  blows  at 
Sherringham's  jaw  before  the  latter  ha.4  time  to  decide  on. 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  79 

his  guard.  Sherringham,  however,  could  take  punishment 
and  owing  to  Bernard's  own  impetuosity  and  carelessness 
countered  heavily  on  his  cheek.  Bernard  forthwith  cooled 
down  and  became  more  wary. 

"  I  say,  Lascelles, —  thanks  awfully,  you  know,"  stam- 
mered Reppington  in  the  interval  as  he  flapped  his  defender 
with  a  handkerchief. 

"  Don't  mensh,"  said  Bernard. 

He  went  into  the  second  round  determined  to  finish  Sher- 
ringham as  quickly  as  possible.  His  anger  was  of  the  quickly 
raised  quickly  cooled  kind,  and  without  it  he  had  little 
stomach  for  fighting.  But  confidence  in  his  own  skill  made 
him  underrate  his  opponent's  staying  power.  After  some 
brisk  sparring  he  delivered  a  hasty  and  ill-conceived  attack, 
and  before  he  could  recover  his  guard  Sherringham  got  in 
a  terrific  blow  behind  the  ear,  and  then  followed  up,  driv- 
ing Bernard  into  a  corner,  who,  dazed  and  shaken,  was  only 
saved  from  a  cruel  battering  by  the  call  of  Time. 

"  Good  man !  One  more  round  will  finish  him,"  said 
Sherringham's  backers,  crowding  round  him. 

"  For  God's  sake  be  more  careful,"  whispered  Reppington. 
"  He's  no  match  for  you  if  you  keep  your  head." 

In  the  third  round  it  was  Sherringham  who  was  over- 
confident, whilst  Bernard  remained  on  the  defensive,  content 
to  rest  his  lungs  and  legs. 

"  Go  in,  Sherry!  "  shouted  his  friends. 

Sherry  went  in  and  came  out  rather  mauled,  and  the  round 
ended  uneventfully.  In  the  next  round  Sherringham, 
goaded  on  by  the  cries  of  his  supporters,  made  a  second 
determined  attempt  to  pulverize  Bernard,  who,  having 
warded  it  off  successfully,  began  to  drive  his  panting  op- 
ponent up  against  the  wall.  Crack!  Bernard's  left  catch- 
ing him  on  the  chin  drove  his  head  back  against  the  wain- 
scotting,  and  his  right  following  up  beneath  the  jaw  re- 
peated the  performance. 

"Time  ["called  the  referee. 

Sherringham  was  no  Spartan.     He  completely  collapsed, 


8o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and     his     supporters     clamorously     assailed     the     referee. 

"  It  wasn't  fair  to  hit  him  against  the  wall,"  was  the  gen- 
eral complaint. 

Rumpworth  smiled  judicially.  He  did  not  care  for  Ber- 
nard, but  he  realized  that  Sherringham  was  beaten,  and 
he  enjoyed  the  feeling  of  being  absolute  dictator  which 
refereeing  gave  him. 

"  Sherringham  should  have  had  more  sense  than  to  go 
near  the  wall,"  he  said. 

"  He  was  driven  there,"  protested  Ledbury. 

"Then  he  was  beaten,"  replied  Rumpworth  imperturb- 
ably. 

"  Well,  it's  not  fair,"  grumbled  Ledbury. 

"  That's  my  decision  anyway,"  snapped  Rumpworth. 
"Time!" 

"  Stay  where  you  are,  Sherringham,"  counselled  Lash- 
worthy,  his  second.  Sherringham  nodded,  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  he  had  no  intention  of  rising  from  his  seat. 

"  I  give  you  ten  seconds,"  said  Rumpworth,  looking  at  his 
watch.  "  Then  it's  Lascelles'  fight,"  he  added  after  a  pause, 
and  walked  off  in  a  huff. 

Bernard  approached  Sherringham. 

"  Look  here,  you  swine,"  he  said,  "  you've  just  destroyed 
something  you  can't  replace,  like  the  clumsy  ass  that  you 
are.  Don't  think  you'll  get  off  without  making  some  sort  of 
amends." 

"  That's  a  rotten  thing  to  say  to  a  chap  after  you've  beaten 
him,"  said  Lashworthy. 

"  You've  had  your  fight  and  that  ought  to  be  enough  for 
you.  Can't  you  shake  hands  like  a  gentleman  ?  "  Ledbury 
was  the  speaker. 

"  Look  here,"  said  Bernard,  "  I  didn't  fight  this  rotter 
for  fun,  and  a  fight  is  no  excuse  for  dodging  out  of  doing 
the  right  thing." 

"  Sherringham  was  right  to  smash  the  engine,"  said  Led- 
bury. "  We  don't  want  Ashbury  turned  into  a  nursery." 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  81 

"  I  don't  care  a  damn  what  you  want,"  retorted  Bernard, 
"  but  Sherringham's  got  to  pay  up." 

"  Look  here,  Lascelles,"  broke  in  a  new  speaker,  "  are  you 
going  to  shake  hands  or  not?  " 

"  I  won't  touch  his  dirty  hand  until  he  makes  amends  to 
Reppington." 

"  Well,  come  on,  Sherry.  Leave  him  alone.  He's  hope- 
less." 

The  crowd,  full  of  virtuous  scorn,  moved  off  with  the 
battered  Sherringham  in  their  midst,  leaving  Bernard  speech- 
less with  indignation.  He  had  fought  for  Right  against 
Might  and  triumphed,  but  against  the  stone  wall  of  the 
Ashbury  mind  he  might  beat  for  ever  in  vain. 

"  What's  to  be  done  with  people  like  that?  "  he  demanded, 
turning  to  Reppington. 

"  God  only  knows,"  said  Reppington,  and  added,  "  I  say, 
you  can  box." 

But  the  worst  was  yet  to  come.  The  story  of  the  fight 
spread  round  the  school,  and  there  was  great  speculation 
as  to  the  cause.  The  true  cause,  however,  could  not  pos- 
sibly occur  to  the  Ashbury  intelligence,  and  before  long  it 
was  hinted  abroad  that  Bernard  took  a  sensual  interest  in 
Reppington. 

"  Have  you  heard  the  latest?  "  said  Robinson  to  Fortescue. 
"  Lascelles  is  gone  on  Reppington." 

"  My  God,"  said  Fortescue.  "  Well,  he's  not  hard  to 
please." 

People  took  to  coughing  if  ever  Bernard  and  Reppington 
were  observed  in  the  same  vicinity,  and  occasionally  a  wag 
would  inquire  of  Bernard  after  Reppington 's  health. 

"  Great  Scott !  "  thought  Bernard.  "  If  those  idiots  who 
write  school  stories  only  knew " 

9 

Meanwhile  Bernard  was  being  educated.  He  learned  how 
to  write  Latin  and  Greek  prose  and  verse  by  the  help  of 


82  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Gradus  and  Dictionary;  how  to  translate  sonorous  Latin 
and  facile  Greek  into  clumsy  ponderous  English;  and  how 
to  cram  three  centuries  of  ancient  history  into  a  page  of 
outline.  One  year  his  class  had  as  master  one  who  had  a 
real  appreciation  of  the  inner  beauty  of  classical  literature 
which  he  tried  to  convey  to  the  boys,  instead  of  using  the 
classics  as  other  masters  did  merely  as  examples  of  gram- 
matical rules.  From  Bernard  he  drew  a  ready  response. 
Indeed  our  hero  had  already  developed  a  certain  critical 
faculty.  He  had  a  qualified  admiration  for  Homer  and  an 
ardent  one  for  Euripides  (cultivated  deliberately  perhaps  for 
this  apostle  of  new  ideas).  He  was  a  little  doubtful  over 
Aeschylus;  was  not  much  of  this  oft-praised  "grandeur" 
touched  with  banality,  he  queried.  Vergil's  Eclogues  roused 
him  to  enthusiasm  which  even  the  discovery  that  they  were  a 
plagiarism  never  could  kill.  (He  never  read  Theocritus.) 
And  yet  after  seven  years  of  constant  study  during  which  he 
acquired  the  reputation  of  being  a  brilliant  classical  scholar, 
he  never  gained  sufficient  facility  in  these  languages  to  make 
him  wish  to  read  them  for  pleasure. 

In  -the  chaos  and  pandemonium  of  M.  Moulin's  classes 
he  picked  up  a  smattering  of  odiously  pronounced  French 
and  in  the  almost  equally  unacademic  atmosphere  of  the 
science  laboratory  he  learned  that  if  a  candle  is  burned  inside 
a  lamp  chimney  with  a  waist  to  it  it  increases  in  weight. 

He  learned  the  accepted  version  of  English  History  and  it 
was  here  that  Ashbury  came  nearest  to  success  with  him,  for 
his  tendency  to  revolutionary  ideas  extended  only  to  politics. 
Economics  were  a  closed  book  to  him  and  in  mere  ignorance 
he  accepted  all  the  economic  doctrines  laid  down  by  the  mil- 
dewed minds  of  those  curious  creatures  who  write  history 
text  books  for  schools.  None  the  less  he  was  a  staunch  up- 
holder of  all  rebellions  from  Wat  Tyler's  to  William  Ill's. 
"  Rebels  are  always  in  the  right,"  he  used  to  say,  "  or  what 
would  they  rebel  for  ?  " 

But  to  this  generalization  he  made  one  exception,  and  that 
was  in  the  case  of  Ireland.  In  the  first  place  the  accounts  of 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  83 

rebellions  in  that  country  were  always  of  the  most  meagre 
description,  glossed  over  and  distorted,  and  the  masters  never 
cared  to  dwell  upon  them ;  and  in  the  second  the  rebels  were 
always  upon  what  he  considered  the  reactionary  side, —  for 
the  King  against  the  Parliament,  for  James  against  William. 
His  complete  lack  of  any  kind  of  national  feeling  was  the 
obvious  reason  for  such  an  attitude. 

Right  through  the  Ashbury  curriculum  he  and  Willoughby 
went,  fast  friends  all  the  time.  Willoughby  took  the  whole 
thing  as  an  Ashbury  boy  should,  and  promised  to  emerge  as 
a  fairly  typical  example  of  the  public  school  product,  albeit 
that  Bernard  was  responsible  for  flaws  that  would  have  been 
looked  at  askance  by  Alma  Mater.  Also  he  conformed  to 
the  better  parts  of  the  code  and  was  on  the  whole  a  very 
popular  boy.  The  mould,  however,  had  no  effect  on  Ber- 
nard. He  was  not  fusible  enough. 

But  while  Ashbury  was  trying  every  device  to  cramp  and 
distort  his  growing  mind,  he  was  gradually  half-uncon- 
sciously,  unsystematically  educating  himself.  He  was  an 
omnivorous  reader  and  the  school  library  was  an  excellent 
one.  By  the  time  he  was  sixteen  he  had  read  extensively 
Scott,  Dickens,  Thackeray  and  Stevenson ;  he  had  read  Tom 
Sawyer  and  Huckleberry  Finn,  Gulliver's  Travels,  Mr.  Mid- 
shipman Easy,  Westward  Ho!,  Max  Pemberton's  Iron  Pirate 
and  Impregnable  City,  most  of  Mr.  Wells'  early  scientific 
romances,  and  Conan  Doyle's  mediaeval  tales.  With  for- 
eign literature,  however,  he  was  poorly  acquainted:  Don 
Quixote  and  a  few  of  Victor  Hugo's  novels,  with  Jules 
Vernes'  romances,  made  the  total  sum.  In  spite  of  his  teach- 
ers' attempts  to  make  him  hate  Shakespeare  by  using  him  as 
a  class  text  he  read  and  reread  Macbeth,  Lear,  Hamlet,  Co- 
riolanus,  Julius  Caesar  and  the  Historical  Plays.  Beyond 
this  his  acquaintance  with  poetry  was  slight:  The  Ancient 
Mariner,  The  Masque  of  Anarchy,  U Allegro,  The  Rubaiyat, 
the  Ballad  of  Reading  Gaol,  and,  a  little  later,  the  Hymn  to 
Proserpine,  were  his  favourites.  But  history  and  geography 
were  still  his  main  delight.  He  read  the  articles  on  many 


84  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

strange  lands  in  Chamber's  Encyclopaedia,  and  he  would 
spend  hours  poring  over  maps.  He  read  books  of  history 
in  every  size  and  form.  The  ancient  eastern  empires; 
Greece,  Rome  and  Carthage;  the  Byzantine  empire;  France 
and  Mediaeval  Italy :  —  these  he  knew  best,  while  he  had 
a  fair  knowledge  of  general  European  History  from  the 
middle  ages  to  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

And  of  course  it  was  but  natural  that  he  should  have  read 
the  Social  Contract.  He  had  some  difficulty  in  procuring  a 
copy,  for  it  was  not  in  his  father's  library  or,  needless  to  say, 
in  that  of  Ashbury.  Finally  he  ran  it  to  earth  in  the  Na- 
tional Library  during  the  holidays,  and  read  it  with  tre- 
mendous eagerness.  The  finely  balanced  opening  sentence 
gave  promise  of  great  things  to  come  but  he  found  the  treatise 
on  the  whole  rather  dull,  though  he  would  not  have  ad- 
mitted this  even  to  himself.  After  the  opening  chapters  had 
worn  down  his  enthusiasm  he  read  on  to  the  end  most  con- 
scientiously, accepting  the  doctrines  of  revolt  without  any 
of  that  impatient  questioning  with  which  he  would  have 
greeted  a  work  of  any  other  character.  Willoughby  was 
somewhat  shocked  to  hear  that  Bernard  had  read  a  book  on 
the  Index.  Although  he  had  imbibed  a  certain  democratic 
outlook  from  his  two  Irish  friends  his  whole  mental  tone 
was  conservative,  reverence  for  anything  established  being 
the  keynote  of  his  character. 

"  I've  something  to  tell  you  that'll  shock  you  more  than 
that,  my  friend,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Spit  it  out,"  said  Willoughby  grimly. 

"  I've  become  a  Socialist." 

"  Impossible,  my  dear  man,"  said  Willoughby  very  deci- 
sively. "  Unless,  of  course,  you've  given  up  your  reli- 
gion." 

"  And  why  not?  "  said  Bernard. 

10 

It  is  necessary  here  to  retrace  our  steps  a  little. 
We  left  Bernard,  at  the  time  a  mere  child  of  fourteen, 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  85 

struggling  with  the  doubts  born  of  an  interview  with  Father 
Bowman  on  the  subject  of  Saint  Aloysius.  Now  as  a  con- 
viction of  ignorance  is  the  first  step  to  knowledge,  so  doubt 
is  the  first  step  to  faith,  provided  that  the  doubt  is  answered 
with  wisdom.  But  wisdom  Father  Bowman  had  not.  In 
fact,  beyond  Piety  and  the  Fear  of  the  Lord  he  was  in- 
adequately provided  with  the  gifts  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
he  had  felt  quite  conscience  free  in  dismissing  Bernard's 
doubts  with  a  command  to  play  football.  So  Bernard  from 
doubting  one  thing  began  to  doubt  many.  His  disgust  at 
St.  Aloysius'  prudity  made  him  question  celibacy  altogether 
and  ask  himself  whether  voluntary  abstention  from  pro- 
creation could  really  be  pleasing  to  the  God  who  said 
"  Increase  and  Multiply."  This  was  the  starting  point  of 
a  bitter  feeling  of  anti-clericalism,  which  was  intensified  by 
the  antagonistic  attitude  of  the  Church  to  his  innate  repub- 
licanism. By  the  time  he  was  fifteen  he  was  definitely  anti- 
cleric,  and  before  he  was  sixteen  he  was  completely  anti- 
religious.  All  this  time  he  sought  advice  or  argument  from 
nobody.  Father  Bowman  had  finally  repelled  him  from 
that. 

And  then,  before  he  was  quite  aware  of  it,  he  began  to 
doubt  the  existence  of  God.  A  certain  strange  harsh  ma- 
terialism that  had  found  its  way  into  his  soul  through  the 
wounds  made  by  injustice  and  unpopularity,  coming  upon 
him  while  he  was  drifting  in  the  course  we  have  described, 
was  responsible  for  this. 

"Could  there  really  be  intangible  spiritual  things?"  he 
asked  himself. 

"  Impossible !  " 

"  And  yet " 

One  of  his  cousins,  a  youth  somewhat  older  than  himself, 
a  Protestant  in  name  but  of  no  definite  faith,  said  to  him 
in  the  holidays: 

"  You  religious  people  say  that  God  is  infinitely  just,  in- 
finitely merciful,  and  infinitely  loving,  and  yet  say  that  he 
condemns  people  to  eternal  torture  for  offending  him.  Now 


86  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

I  don't  claim  to  be  anything  wonderful  in  the  way  of  jus- 
tice, kindness  or  mercy,  but  I  wouldn't  dream  of  doing  that 
to  every  one  no  matter  how  badly  he  offended  me." 

Bernard  had  no  answer  to  this  and  his  doubts  increased 
in  intensity. 

"  God  tells  me  I'm  to  believe  the  Church,  and  the  Church 
tells  me  that  God  treats  sinners  as  even  an  ordinary  decent 
man  wouldn't  treat  his  enemies.  Is  there  a  God  at  all?  " 

So  he  reflected,  and  at  last  decided  to  test  the  matter  by 
going  to  confession. 

"  I'm  always  being  tempted  to  sins  against  faith,  Father," 
he  said. 

"  Against  what  articles  of  faith,  my  child  ?  " 

"  Against  all  religion  altogether,  Father." 

"  But,  my  child,  when  these  temptations  come  to  you 
you  must  pray  against  them.  Pray  to  our  Blessed  Lady  and 
our  holy  patron  St.  Aloysius  to  intercede  for  you.  Pray  to 
the  Holy  Ghost  to  give  you  this  precious  gift  of  faith." 

"  But  how  can  I  pray  to  the  Holy  Ghost  if  I  don't  believe 
he  exists  ?  "  asked  Bernard  desperately. 

"  Have  you  been  reading  irreligious  books,  my  child  ?  " 

"  No,  Father,"  he  said.  He  would  have  liked  to  say  that 
it  was  religious  books  that  were  mainly  responsible  for  his 
downfall  but  dared  not. 

"  I've  only  been  thinking,"  he  put  in  weakly. 

"  My  child,  you  must  put  these  thoughts  away  from  you. 
The  mysteries  of  faith  are  beyond  our  mortal  comprehen- 
sion, but  I  would  ask  you  to  look  around  at  the  wonderful 
world  about  you;  at  the  stars,  those  gigantic  bodies  that 
seem  mere  pin  points  lost  in  the  immensity  of  space;  at  the 
intricate  workmanship  of  a  simple  daisy;  and  ask  yourself 
was  there  no  designer  of  all  this.  Also,  my  child,  read  good 
books,  and  above  all  things  pray.  Any  other  sins,  my 
child?" 

Bernard  went  away  but  half  satisfied.  The  wonderful 
world  was  all  very  well,  but  how  material  it  was.  Could 
there  be  immaterial  things?  Was  his  mind  limited  because 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  87 

he  could  not  conceive  the  immaterial?  Could  other  fellows 
conceive  it?  Could  Willoughby?  Yes.  Could  Lash- 
worthy  or  Rumpworth?  Well,  they  didn't  care  enough 
about  these  things  to  bother  about  doubting  them.  .  .  .  Then 
there  was  this  question  of  Hell. 

His  mind  remained  in  a  ferment  for  a  time,  but  soon  set- 
tled down  to  a  cold  indifferent  atheism.  Such  an  attitude, 
however,  was  incompatible  with  his  whole  temperament,  and 
gradually  his  atheism  became  positive  and  missionary.  He 
began  to  feel  that  it  might  be  his  duty  to  save  others  from 
the  slough  of  superstition  from  which  he  had  dragged  him- 
self, and  commenced  operations  by  breathing  doubts  about 
the  scientific  accuracy  of  the  book  of  Genesis  into  the  ears 
of  Eugene.  The  latter  was  a  good  Ashburian  but  also  a 
good  boy  and  he  staved  off  the  tempter  by  showers  of  dog- 
mata. He  also  told  his  mother  about  Bernard's  delinquen- 
cies, to  the  terrible  dismay  of  the  good  lady,  who  had  an 
immediate  vision  of  devouring  flames  searching  the  soul  of 
her  darling  boy.  It  was  in  the  Christmas  holidays  of  his 
last  year  at  school  that  Eugene  made  his  revelation,  and  she 
seized  the  first  opportunity  when  she  was  alone  with  Bernard 
to  approach  him  about  it. 

She  was  amazed  to  find  that  he  did  not  deny  the  charge. 
Nay,  to  her  grief  and  dismay,  he  appeared  to  take  pride  in 
it.  She  tried  tearful  remonstrance,  but  in  vain.  She  tried 
argument  but  proved  to  be  no  theologian.  Bernard  himself 
knew  more  about  the  religion  she  was  defending  than  she 
did  herself.  Then  she  said  to  him: 

"  I  see  you  are  quite  hardened,  and  I've  done  all  that  my 
conscience  requires  in  trying  to  reclaim  you.  Well,  go  your 
own  way  if  you  like,  but  one  thing  I  insist  on.  Let  Eugene 
and  Sandy  alone.  I  won't  have  their  faith  undermined." 

"  But  look  here,  mother,"  replied  Bernard.  "  If  I  sin- 
cerely believe  Atheism  right  and  Christianity  a  demoralizing 
superstition  haven't  I  as  much  right  to  preach  my  views  as 
you  have?  " 

"  No.     I'm  your  mother." 


88  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  That  has  nothing  to  do  with  it." 

"  Now,  Bernard,  I  don't  want  any  argument.  I  can't 
prevent  you  going  wrong  yourself,  but  I  forbid  you  to  lead 
others  astray." 

"  I'm  not  leading  any  one  astray." 

"  I  say  you  are." 

"  But,  hang  it  all,  mother,  can't  you  understand  that — ?  " 

"  No.     And  I  don't  want  to.     Now  that's  enough." 

And  so  the  conversation  closed. 

From  his  father  he  gained  a  more  sympathetic  hearing. 
For  the  sake  of  his  practice  he  was  an  orthodox  Protestant, 
but  he  was  in  reality  an  agnostic.  He  prided  himself  on  his 
broad-minded  and  tolerant  attitude  towards  religious  things : 
"  Priests  and  nuns  ought  to  be  shot,"  he  used  to  say,  and 
Bernard  quite  agreed  with  him. 

He  was  very  pleased  to  find  that  Bernard  was  on  this  point 
shaping  according  to  his  wishes.  More  than  once  he  had 
regretted  his  matrimonial  promise  in  respect  to  his  children, 
but  with  all  his  faults  he  was  on  the  whole  an  honourable 
man  and  he  had  never  broken  it. 

"  You're  quite  right,  my  boy,"  he  said.  "  There's  too 
much  of  this  damned  superstition.  I  wish  I'd  never  allowed 
your  mind  to  be  soiled  by  it,  but  a  promise  is  a  promise, 
you  know." 

II 

And  while  this  spiritual  development  was  in  progress  he 
heard  for  the  first  time  of  Socialism.  He  heard  it  spoken 
of  invariably  in  accents  of  condemnation,  which  alone  was 
enough  to  make  Bernard  think  favourably  of  it,  and  the  fact 
that  its  strongest  enemies  were  the  Church  and  the  boys  of 
Ashbury  made  him  ready  to  acquit  it  unheard.  "  This 
leads  to  Socialism  "  was  one  of  the  accepted  final  arguments 
in  the  debating  society  against  any  democratic  principle 
under  discussion,.  "  Atheists,  anarchists,  and  Socialists," 
generalized  the  preacher  in  the  pulpit. 

So  Bernard  became  a  Socialist  and  bought  books  on  the 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  89 

subject.  He  read  Shaw  and  Snowden  and  Wells'  Modern 
Utopia.  He  read  Chesterton  and  wondered  where  was  the 
difference  between  that  brilliant  controversialist  and  the 
principles  he  was  attacking. 

His  economics  of  course  were  of  the  vaguest  description, 
but  philosophically  Socialism  gripped  him.  It  became  his 
creed,  a  creed  as  fixed  and  based  on  as  much  ignorance  as 
his  mother's  Catholicism,  but  ten  times  more  ardent.  He 
set  out  to  make  converts  but  failed  miserably.  Willoughby 
agreed  with  everything  he  said  about  the  evils  of  the  existing 
order  but  considered  remedial  measures  sufficient.  Murray 
said  that  competition  was  the  soul  of  effort  and  that  Socialism 
would  simply  kill  initiative.  Rumpworth  asked  where  would 
England  be  without  her  aristocracy  and  Ledbury  said: 

"  You  wouldn't  be  a  Socialist,  Lascelles,  if  you  owned  a 
jolly  good  bit  of  land  for  shooting." 

Finally  Mallow  said  that  he  was  only  a  revolutionary 
where  Ireland  was  concerned.  Otherwise  he  was  a  con- 
servative like  all  decent  Irishmen.  The  meaning  of  which 
was  obscure  to  Bernard. 

Then  the  motion  "  that  this  house  disapproves  of  the 
principles  of  Socialism  "  was  discussed  in  the  Debating  So- 
ciety and  Bernard  undertook  to  lead  the  opposition.  He 
had  much  difficulty  in  collecting  speakers.  Willoughby 
agreed  to  speak  in  favour  of  a  "  moderate  "  kind  of  Social- 
ism and  Murray  gave  his  adherence  because  he  hated  to  be  on 
the  re-actionary  side  even  when  he  disapproved  of  the  other. 
To  his  surprise  Reppington,  who  was  not  a  member  of  the 
society,  promised  to  join  and  make  his  maiden  speech.  One 
other  member  volunteered  his  services  as  there  was  no  room 
for  him  on  the  ministerial  list.  He  would  speak,  he  said, 
but  not  vote. 

Rumpworth  opened  with  the  usual  speech  demanded  on 
such  occasions.  Political  platitudes,  economic  fallacies,  and 
religious  insincerities  made  up  the  bulk  of  an  oration  which 
was  warmly  applauded.  Then  amid  ironic  cheers  and  en- 
couraging remarks  Bernard  rose.  He  had  decided  to  reserve 


90  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

his  most  crushing  arguments  for  the  closing  speech  which 
was  his  privilege  as  leader,  when  he  could  pulverize  the 
arguments  of  his  opponents  who  had  concluded,  and  so 
he  now  contented  himself  with  a  dispassionate  definition  of 
what  Socialism  really  was,  and  then  sat  down.  The  debate 
then  ran  its  course,  differing  in  nowise  from  its  predecessors 
and  contemporaries.  Competition,  initiative,  and  encourage- 
ment of  idleness  were  the  main  planks  in  the  ministerial 
program,  with  occasional  appeals  to  religion  and  "our 
glorious  aristocracy."  The  opposition  was  half-hearted,  but 
Reppington  astonished  every  one  by  his  extraordinary  knowl- 
edge on  the  subject.  He  was  the  only  person  in  the  room 
who  understood  a  word  of  economics.  Finally  Bernard 
returned  to  the  charge.  He  attacked  each  of  the  main 
ministerial  arguments  in  turn.  Socialism,  said  his  op- 
ponents, would  abolish  competition.  All  the  better.  Com- 
petition, he  held,  was  an  evil.  (Oh!  oh!,)  Yes.  He  would 
substitute  for  it  a  better  thing,  Co-operation.  Capitalism 
made  the  world  a  waste  of  selfish  striving,  every  man  for 
himself  and  the  weakest  to  the  wall.  Why  not  look  upon 
mankind  as  a  community  in  which  every  one  strove  to  im- 
prove the  world  in  which  all  had  to  live  ?  Let  their  motto 
be  each  for  all  and  all  for  each.  Poverty  must  be  abol- 
ished because  it  was  as  injurious  to  the  rich  as  to  the  poor. 
(This  from  Shaw.)  Then  as  to  the  killing  of  initiative, 
had  they  so  low  an  opinion  of  themselves  and  of  the  rest  of 
mankind  as  to  imagine  that  human  initiative  could  be  meas- 
ured in  terms  of  shillings  and  pence?  Did  they  not  know 
that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  love  of  a  work  for  its  own 
sake?  The  ministry  also  claimed  that  Socialism  would  en- 
courage people  to  be  idle  at  the  expense  of  the  rest.  Did  not 
Capitalism  do  the  same?  Were  not  the  unemployed  a  per- 
petual burden?  And  what  about  our  pampered  idle  aris- 
tocracy? (Voices:  "Not  idle!")  Yes.  Idle  aristoc- 
racy. Any  one  who  lived  on  the  work  of  others,  be  he  rich 
or  poor,  was  an  idler.  Well,  they  knew  what  bees  did  to 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  91 

drones.  He  would  do  the  same  to  the  aristocracy.  (Booh !) 
Some  honourable  members  had  said  that  Socialism  was  an 
attack  on  property.  That  was  not  strictly  true.  Social- 
ism attacked  the  superfluous  and  often  illgotten  wealth  of 
the  rich.  Capitalism,  as  Chesterton,  an  opponent  of  Social- 
ism, pointed  out,  attacked  the  necessities  of  the  poor. 

"  One  word  more,"  he  said.  "  The  religious  argument 
has  been  frequently  brought  up  this  evening.  Too  fre- 
quently in  my  opinion.  But  I  see  no  force  in  it.  I  see  no 
reason  why  all  genuine  Christians  shouldn't  become  So- 
cialists. The  universal  argument  against  Socialism,  which 
I  have  already  refuted  on  other  grounds,  seems  to  be  that 
it  rewards  the  undeserving  as  much  as  the  deserving.  Well, 
I  say,  why  not  ?  Christianity  preaches  '  Do  as  you  would 
be  done  by.'  Which  of  you  would  object  to  being  rewarded 
undeserved  ?  Therefore  I  say :  '  Practise  your  religion  and 
pay  all  equally  regardless  of  their  deserts  —  of  which,  by 
the  way,  you  are  not  the  judge.'  "  (Boohs  and  slight  ap- 
plause.) 

The  motion  was  carried  by  twenty-six  votes  to  four. 

"  You're  a  great  rebel  except  where  your  own  country  is 
concerned,"  said  Mallow  after  the  meeting. 

"  Oh,  go  to  Hell  I "  replied  Bernard. 

After  this  Bernard  found  himself  frequently  drawn  into 
argument  about  Socialism,  and  the  utter  inability  of  his 
opponents  to  oppose  to  him  anything  but  dogma  and  their 
own  stupidity  confirmed  his  belief  in  the  infallibility  of  his 
principles.  He  was  convinced  that  because  arguments  could 
not  be  found  against  him  they  simply  did  not  exist. 

One  of  these  conversations  is  worth  recording  because  it 
throws  a  further  light  on  the  Ashbury  mind.  It  was  Rump- 
worth  who  set  the  question  going  between  himself  and  Ber- 
nard and  Willoughby.  Beaten  in  controversy  he  took  refuge 
behind  Mother  Church.  Thereupon  Bernard  burst  out: 

"I'm  fed  up  with  the  Church  and  all  her  ways.  She's 
been  a  re-actionary  force  from  the  beginning  of  her  history 


92  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

till  now.  And  I  tell  you  this,  what  first  made  me  think 
Socialism  right  was  the  fact  that  the  Church  was  against 
it." 

"  Well,  that's  a  bloody  rotten  thing  to  say,"  said  Rump- 
worth.  "  You  go  a  damn  sight  too  far." 

And  he  walked  off.  Bernard,  turning  to  Willoughby, 
said: 

"Fine  moral  indignation,  eh?  And  he  reads  a  novel  in 
church  and  goes  to  Communion  every  day  because  thanks- 
giving gets  him  off  a  few  minutes"  of  study." 

"Rot!" 

"  It's  true.  He  bragged  of  it  to  me  the  other  day.  And 
he  spends  his  spare  time  footling  around  with  little  boys, 
what's  more.  Yet  he  can't  stand  plain  speaking  about  the 
Church." 

"  Still,  that  was  a  bit  strong,"  remonstrated  Willoughby. 
"  I  mean,  even  if  you  think  things  like  that  about  the  Church 
you  shouldn't  say  them." 

"  To  hell  with  suppression ! "  said  Bernard.  "  We 
shouldn't  be  afraid  of  the  truth." 

"  I 'don't  mean  you  should  hide  the  truth,  but  you  ought 
to  think  twice  before  you  trot  out  a  big  statement  like  that. 
It  saves  the  trouble  of  taking  it  back  afterwards,  you  know." 

"  I  don't  think  I'll  ever  want  to  take  that  back,"  said 
Bernard. 

"  You  never  know,"  replied  Willoughby. 

12 

A  discussion  arose  in  the  recreation  room  one  evening 
during  Bernard's  second  last  term  at  Ashbury.  The  par- 
ticipants were  Sedgwick,  Mallow,  Lashworthy,  Bernard  and 
one  or  two  others.  A  boy  called  Osgood  had  been  reading 
the  Exploits  of  Brigadier  Gerrard  and,  apropos  of  some 
remark  made  by  Sedgwick,  related  the  incident  where  Ger- 
rard commented  upon  the  delusion  common  to  all  nations 
that  their  soldiers  are  braver  than  those  of  any  other  nation. 

"  ,And  then,"  Osgood  said,  "  the  Brigadier  says  that  isn't 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  93 

true.  '  All  nations  are  equally  brave,'  he  says,  '  except  that 
the  French  are  slightly  more  courageous  than  the  others.'  " 

Every  one  laughed,  and  then  Mallow  interjected  in  his 
deep  voice: 

"  I  bet  you  English  think  you're  the  bravest  nation  in  the 
world." 

"Yes.     But  it's  true  in  our  case,"  said  Sedgwick. 

"  What  price  Gerrard  now?  "  said  Bernard. 

"  You  needn't  laugh,"  said  Sedgwick.  "  Doesn't  our  his- 
tory prove  it  ?  " 

Bernard  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  remained  silent.  He 
had  grown  tired  of  arguing  with  fools.  But  Mallow  was 
not  so  constituted. 

"  That's  all  my  eye,"  he  said.  "  The  French  or  the 
Spanish  or  anybody  else  could  say  the  same.  Give  me  a 
decent  proof." 

"  We  all  know  it's  true,"  said  Sedgwick,  calmly  entrenched 
in  self-complacency. 

"  It's  well  known,"  put  in  Lashworthy. 

"  Rot!  "  said  Mallow. 

"  Your  opinion  doesn't  matter  a  damn,"  drawled  Lash- 
worthy.  "  You're  only  a  dirty  Irishman." 

The  light  of  battle  leaped  in  Mallow's  ordinarily  dull  eye 
at  this  insult.  He  went  for  Lashworthy  in  a  trice  and  they 
had  a  tussle.  It  was  no  regular  fight.  «They  just  bashed 
each  other  for  a  while  and  then  left  off  as  if  by  mutual  con- 
sent. 

But  the  incident  left  an  impression  on  Bernard. 

"  There  must  be  something  in  this  Irish  business,"  he 
reflected.  "  Mallow's  an  awful  ass,  but  he'd  hardly  fight 
for  nothing.  And  if  Lashworthy  did  mean  something  in- 
sulting, then  .  .  ."  endless  vistas  of  speculation  opened  be- 
fore him. 

In  his  perplexity  he  thought  of  questioning  Murray,  but 
the  prospect  of  a  lecture  on  Home  Rule  deterred  him,  so  he 
went  to  Mallow  instead. 

"  Look  here,"  he  said,  "  don't  waste  time  abusing  me  for 


94  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

being  no  better  than  an  Englishman.  Tell  me  straight  out 
what's  at  the  bottom  of  this  English-Irish  business." 

"  God  help  you,"  said  Mallow.  "  Don't  you  know  that 
the  English  conquered  Ireland  ?  " 

"  No.     When  was  it?  " 

"  A  good  while  ago.     In  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Second." 

"  Of  course.     I  remember  reading  something  about  it." 

"  Half  a  line  in  an  English  History,  I  suppose,"  said 
Mallow  scornfully. 

"Yes.— Well,  is  that  all?" 

"  Isn't  it  enough  ?  " 

"  It  doesn't  affect  me  very  much,  I  must  say." 

"Ah,  get  away,"  said  Mallow.  "  I'm  fed  up  with  you." 
And  he  strolled  away. 

Bernard's  knowledge  of  his  native  land  remained  in  this 
state  of  development  until  the  evening  of  Felim  O'Dwyer's 
speech  on  Home  Rule  in  the  Debating  Society. 

Felim  O'Dwyer  was  another  of  Ashbury's  failures.  He 
was  a  small,  slight,  fair  haired  boy  two  classes  below  Ber- 
nard, and  therefore  a  neophyte  to  the  Debating  Society. 
Owing  to  that  strange  clannishness  that  keeps  boys  in 
cliques  and  sets  of  their  own,  and  also  to  the  disparity  in 
their  ages  and  position  in  the  school  he  was  known  to  Ber- 
nard only  by  name  and  repute.  From  the  viewpoint  of  the 
average  school  boy  he  was  a  person  of  no  account,  being  weak 
in  body,  timid  in  character,  and  indifferent  to  athletics. 
But  he  was  at  the  top  of  his  class  without  appearing  to  exert 
himself  unduly,  and  he  was  known  to  have  a  sharp  and 
witty  tongue.  Besides  being  a  classical  scholar  he  was  the 
best  essayist  in  the  school,  and  had  beaten  Bernard  in  the 
contest  for  the  Senior  Essay  Prize.  In  addition  to  this 
literary  distinction  he  acquired  notoriety  from  a  note  book 
he  always  carried  in  his  pocket  in  which  he  scribbled  satirical 
verses  and  lampoons  about  his  fellows.  These  he  used  to 
recite  to  his  companions  and  in  consequence  received  many 
kicks  from  big  boys  infuriated  by  hearing  their  rimed  fail- 
ings chanted  in  public.  Ledbury  nearly  wrenched  his  arm 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  95 

from  its  socket  for  a  cutting  Limerick,  while  Mallow  on 
the  other  hand  was  rather  flattered  by  a  little  quatrain  which 
ran: 

Brian  Mallow 

Will   die  on  a  gallow 

By  hook  or  by  crook. 

It's  his  favourite  nook. 

And  Bernard  himself  was  made  to  wince  by  a  similar  one: 

Bernard  Lascelles 

In  Spain  has  castles. 

That's  why 

You  never  can  catch  his  eye. 

There  was  also  a  comic  opera  which  introduced  most  of 
Ashbury's  celebrities.  Bernard  figured  in  a  stage  direction 
which  read: 

Enter  Lascelles  on  a  high  horse,  very  much  in  earnest. 

It  can  be  easily  understood  that  O'Dwyer  was  unpopular. 
His  only  friend  was  Bernard's  brother  Eugene,  and  he 
seemed  to  take  pleasure  in  his  isolation. 

A  Home  Rule  debate  at  Ashbury  always  ran  on  certain 
traditional  lines.  The  Unionist  side  simply  abused  Ireland 
and  asserted  that  if.  England  had  not  conquered  her  some 
ether  country  would.  Occasionally  some  original  genius 
would  proclaim  that  to  be  governed  by  England  was  freedom 
enough  for  anybody,  England  being  herself  the  "  land  of  the 
free."  As  for  the  Home  Rulers,  they  were  mainly  amiable 
people  who  advocated  Home  Rule  on  the  ground  that  it 
would  make  the  Irish  more  "  loyal."  The  Irish  boys,  what- 
ever their  politics  at  home,  always  came  out  with  rebellious 
speeches  as  a  reaction.  To  this  rule  Bernard  and  Molloy 
were  exceptions.  Molloy  always  spoke  for  England  because 
that  was  the  respectable  side,  and  Bernard  did  not  speak  at 
all  because  he  was  uninstructed  and  uninterested. 

When  it  came  to  O'Dwyer 's  turn  to  speak  he  leaped  to  his 


96  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

feet  flushed  with  anger  and  trembling  with  impatience. 
Some  one  had  said  that  the  best  Irish  people  did  not  want 
Home  Rule,  and  O'Dwyer  seized  upon  this  as  the  text  for 
his  attack. 

"  The  honourable  member  is  quite  right,"  he  said.  "  The 
best  Irish  people  —  and  I  am  quite  aware  that  the  honour- 
able member  and  I  hold  different  views  as  to  who  they  are 
—  don't  want  Home  Rule.  But  what  do  they  want  ?  They 
want  —  and  I  want  —  separation.  We  want  a  republic. 
(Hisses.)  Yes.  A  Republic;  But  I  don't  intend  to  argue 
the  point  here.  It  would  be  quite  useless,  and  I  don't  con- 
sider that  it's  any  concern  of  this  house.  I  only  got  up  to 
set  your  doubts  at  rest  as  to  what  Ireland  really  wants,  and 
having  done  so  I'll  sit  down."  (Groans.) 

Bernard  observed  Lashworthy  approach  O'Dwyer  after 
the  debate  and  say: 

"  You  ought  to  keep  that  kind  of  thing  for  your  pigstye 
in  Connemara.  Remember  you're  in  England  now." 

"  I  thought  I  was  in  a  pigstye,"  replied  O'Dwyer.  "  Silly 
mistake,  wasn't  it?" 

Lashworthy,  nonplussed,  turned  away. 

Bernard  determined  to  make  O'Dwyer's  acquaintance. 
The  supreme  contempt  with  which  he  had  treated  the  so- 
ciety rather  appealed  to  him,  and  the  fact  that  O'Dwyer  was 
like  himself  an  outsider  and  a  revolutionary  was  a  further 
recommendation.  But  their  meeting,  brought  about  by  Eu- 
gene, was  a  failure.  Bernard  sought  eagerly  for  informa- 
tion about  Ireland,  but  O'Dwyer  was  one  of  those  quick 
impetuous  people  who  are  too  impatient  to  give  full  explana- 
tions, and  too  patently  contemptuous  of  views  they  disagree 
with  to  be  successful  propagandists.  Moreover  he  failed  to 
realize  that  Bernard,  owing  to  his  origin  and  training,  was 
without  both  the  intellectual  and  emotional  fundamentals  of 
Nationalism  essential  to  making  the  subject  vital  or  even 
important.  To  Bernard  it  was  only  a  small  problem  of  local 
government  that  was  under  discussion  and  O'Dwyer's  ex- 
citability over  the  question  irritated  and  annoyed  him.  At 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  97 

the  same  time  the  force  of  his  facts  and  logic  went  home 
and  made  of  him  a  dispassionate  esoteric  devolutionist. 

"  I  don't  see  why  Home  Rule  shouldn't  satisfy  you,"  he 
said,  and  against  this  breakwater  the  torrent  of  O'Dwyer's 
eloquence  dashed  in  vain.  "  This  republic  business  seems 
to  me  a  mere  piece  of  narrow  minded  selfishness.  It  just 
means  cutting  yourself  off  from  your  fellow  men  in  England 
and  the  world.  It  isn't  progress  at  all.  It's  reaction." 

They  got  more  and  more  on  each  other's  nerves.  O'Dwyer 
thought  Bernard  self-satisfied,  and  Bernard  thought 
O'Dwyer  needlessly  offensive,  for  the  latter  made  difference 
in  argument  a  personal  matter  and  always  broke  out  sooner 
or  later  into  heated  language.  And  with  the  egotism  and 
confidence  of  clever  youth  each  felt  that  any  one  who  dis- 
agreed with  him  must  be  a  knave  or  a  fool. 

One  day  Bernard  wound  up  the  controversy  by  saying: 

"  Anyway,  the  question  isn't  of  tremendous  importance. 
The  world  is  a  big  place  and  Ireland  a  very  small  part  of  it. 
I  think  it's  sheer  waste  of  time  to  bother  about  such  a  piffling 
little  corner." 

"  I  suppose  you  think  that  a  bloody  fine  broadminded  sort 
of  thing  to  say,"  sneered  O'Dwyer. 

"  I  think  it's  common  sense." 

"  Common  high  falutin  excuse  for  dodging  what  you  don't 
understand." 

"  Don't  excite  yourself  over  nothing." 

"  Is  your  intelligence  nothing  then?  " 

They  descended  to  vulgar  abuse  after  that  and  their  ac- 
quaintanceship terminated. 

13 

Bernard's  school-days  were  drawing  to  a  close,  but  he 
was  destined  to  have  one  more  experience  before  the  end. 
On  arriving  at  Dillingworth  station  for  his  last  term  he 
found  that  he  had  mislaid  his  ticket.  It  took  some  time  to 
unearth  it  from  a  forgotten  pocket  and  when  he  arrived  at 
the  gates  he  found  fhat  all  the  brakes  sent  from  the  schooj 


98  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

were  packed  and  ready  to  move  off.  One  little  boy  was  in  a 
similar  predicament,  and  was  also  uncertain  of  the  road,  so 
they  walked  up  together  in  the  summer  evening.  Next  day 
they  passed  each  other  in  the  corridor  and  Bernard  nodded 
to  the  youngster,  who  returned  the  salute  with  a  smile:  he 
had  a  very  pleasant  smile.  This  happened  once  or  twice 
afterwards,  and  suddenly  Bernard  became  aware  that  he 
was  taking  too  much  interest  in  the  boy. 

No.  He  was  not  a  degenerate.  He  was  a  victim  of  the 
system  that  herds  young  children  and  craving  adolescents 
together  in  a  harsh  comfortless  atmosphere.  An  unnatural 
system,  and  "  unnatural  deeds  do  breed  unnatural  trouble." 
.  .  .  Love,  in  one  form  or  another,  is  essential  to  all  human 
beings.  It  is  the  source  of  life,  the  nutriment  of  infancy, 
the  prop  of  youth,  the  end  and  the  purpose  of  maturity, 
and  the  gratification  of  parenthood.  The  very  existence  of 
the  uru'verse  is  due  to  the  love  of  the  Creator  for  creating 
and  the  created  thing,  and  the  creative  origin  and  purpose  of 
love  is  its  most  vital  claimant  and  impelling  fact.  Hence 
the  evil  of  this  harsh  unwholesome  herding  of  youth.  You 
take  boyhood,  passively  loving,  leaning  on  love  for  nourish- 
ment, instruction,  and  protection,  away  from  the  love  of  its 
natural  fosterers  and  protectors;  and  you  place  it  in  a  cold, 
rough,  loveless  atmosphere  along  with  adolescence,  actively 
loving,  seeking  in  love  self-expression  and  self-fulfilment, 
exuberant  as  the  spring,  hungry  for  beauty,  unschooled  to 
restraint,  with  the  seeds  of  self -reproduction  vividly  ripening 
and  clamouring  to  be  sown,  and  the  naturally  unnatural 
result  follows  inevitably.  Pedagogues  may  blind  themselves 
to  facts  and  feel  that  they  have  done  their  duty  in  expelling 
a  flagrant  case,  but  rare  individual  depravity  spreads  but 
small  contagion.  Any  mind  free  from  self-interest  in  the 
matter  can  see  that  it  is  the  system  that  is  at  fault. 

Bernard,  being  healthy  and  clean  minded,  fought  the  temp- 
tation. He  fought  it  with  his  own  weapons:  with  his  man- 
liness, with  his  self-respect,  with  his  hatred  of  softness  and 
uncleanness,  with  his  love  of  order  and  restraint.  For  a 


YOUNG  ENGLAND  99 

time  he  was  successful,  but  soon  he  found  his  defences  in- 
sufficient, and  began  to  realize  that  alone  he  was  but  a  weak 
child.  He  discovered  that  he  needed  help. 

And  then  all  of  a  sudden  he  began  to  pray.  \Varm 
springs  in  his  soul  that  he  had  imagined  to  be  dried  up 
broke  the  dams  he  had  built  for  them  and  gushed  forth  in 
a  comforting  stream.  Faith  and  hope  and  love  came  back 
to  him  without  any  intellectual  effort.  He  felt  like  a  child 
whose  mother,  flouted  formerly,  had  come  to  its  rescue  in 
distress  and  danger.  God  had  come  to  him,  it  seemed,  in 
sheer  pity  to  save  his  tottering  manhood. 

So  he  returned  temporarily,  at  any  rate,  to  the  shelter 
of  the  rock. 

14 

The  last  day  arrived. 

Willoughby  had  invited  Bernard  and  Murray  to  spend  a 
week  at  his  home  in  Warwickshire  after  the  Public  Schools 
Camp,  to  which  they  were  now  going,  was  over. 

"  We'll  have  some  sport,"  he  said.  "  My  brother  will  be 
down  from  Oxford  and  he'll  probably  have  a  friend  with 
him." 

The  three  were  going  up  to  Oxford  next  year,  and  had 
decided  on  Magdalen  College. 

And  now  the  O.T.C.  was  drawn  up  in  the  quadrangle  for 
the  final  inspection.  Bernard  in  khaki  with  three  stripes  on 
his  arm  cursed  his  section  in  truly  military  style.  Then 
came  the  inspection,  followed  by  the  command  : 

"  Fall  out.     Into  the  brakes  with  you." 

To  the  scream  of  bugles  and  the  thud  of  drums  the  brakes 
filled  up. 

"  Mind  you  all  join  the  Union,"  said  the  Prefect,  as  he 
bid  good-bye  to  those  who  were  leaving  for  good. 

Then  the  band  ceased  playing  and  packed  itself  into  the 
last  brake.  Some  one  in  front  struck  up  the  Ashbury  song. 
Out  dashed  the  horses  through  the  gate  way  and  the  old  grey 
mansion  receded  in  the  distance. 


ioo  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

All  the  way  to  the  station  and  afterwards  in  the  train 
Bernard  sat  in  silent  meditation. 

"  Old  Ashbury !  "  he  said  to  himself.  "  What  has  she 
done  for  me?  Given  me  a  smattering  of  culture  and  a  lot 
of  other  stuff  that  I'd  have  had  to  unlearn  if  I  hadn't  re- 
jected it  at  the  start.  You're  a  failure,  old  Ashbury.  You 
tried  to  make  me  religious  and  you  nearly  made  me  an 
atheist ;  you  tried  to  make  me  a  celibate  and  you  nearly  made 
me  a  rake;  you  tried  to  make  me  an  English  gentleman  and 
you've  made  me  a  cosmopolitan  Socialist.  ...  I  wonder 
what  you're  making  of  Eugene." 

Quite  suddenly  he  realized  that  he  and  Eugene  had  been 
strangers  to  one  another  all  these  years. 

"  Old  Alma  Mater,  you're  a  fraud,"  he  said  to  himself  as 
the  train  slid  out  of  Dillingworth  station. 

Through  a  gap  in  the  hills  he  caught  a  last  glimpse  of  the 
towers  of  Ashbury  dim  in  the  distance. 


CHAPTER  V 

WILLOUGHBY   TOWERS 


A  GREAT,  silent,  smooth-running  motor  car  carried 
three  sunburnt,  khaki-clad  young  men  from  Deeping 
Station  to  Willoughby  Towers.  Along  the  broad  highway 
it  sped,  then  wound  through  trim  green-hedged  byways  to 
emerge  on  a  long  straight  road  of  a  different  complexion, 
narrow  and  unfenced. 

"  The  Roman  road,"  said  Willoughby. 

"  Queer  how  countries  show  their  character  in  their 
roads,"  said  Murray.  "  Roman  roads  are  hard  and 
straight  like  bands  of  steel:  conqueror's  roads  to  hold  a  land 
in  subjection.  English  roads  show  England's  love  for  per- 
sonal property-rights;  they  dodge  and  twist  about,  skirting 
this  man's  meadow  and  avoiding  that  man's  mill,  and  in- 
sinuating themselves  between  the  baron's  demesne  and  the 
cottager's  kitchen  garden.  French  roads  combine  efficiency 
with  beauty,  running  from  place  to  place  by  the  shortest  and 
most  picturesque  route;  and  if  the  way  isn't  naturally  beau- 
tiful they  make  it  so  artificially  by  means  of  shade  trees. 
I'm  sure  Russian  roads  are  dreary  and  melancholy,  and 
German  roads  smooth  and  efficient;  and  I'd  like  to  know  if 
Scottish  roads  are  dour  and  Turkish  roads  sinuous.  As  for 
Irish  roads,  they're  chucked  down  anyhow,  all  over  the 
place.  .  .  .  Hello!  We're  coming  out  on  to  the  high  road 
again." 

"  Half  a  mile  more,"  said  Willoughby. 

They  reached  a  lodge  gate  which  was  opened  by  an 
obsequious  gate  keeper  exactly  like  a  thousand  other  gate 
keepers.  They  drove  up  a  serpentine  avenue  between  rows 
101 


102  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

of  cedars,  crunching  the  thickly  laid  gravel.  The  chauffeur 
tootled  his  horn  and  as  they  emerged  on  a  great  circular  sweep 
of  gravel  before  the  house  an  old  gentleman  came  down  the 
steps.  Willoughby  waved  his  service  cap  and  the  old  gen- 
tleman cried  out:  "  Here  we  are  again."  The  car 
stopped,  panting,  and  the  three  young  men  jumped  out. 

Willoughby  introduced  his  friends  to  his  father,  who  wel- 
comed them  in  a  bluff,  breezy  manner.  After  a  moment 
he  said: 

"  You'll  find  your  mother  in  the  drawing-room,  Jack," 
whereat  Willoughby  sped  off  into  the  house.  Then,  to  a 
servitor  standing  impassively  and  unobtrusively  in  the  back- 
ground : 

"  Show  these  gentlemen  to  their  rooms,  Hawkins." 
Murray  and  Bernard  were  conducted  through  the  hall, 
cumbrously  adorned  with  suits  of  armour,  stags'  heads,  skins 
of  wild  beasts,  and  portraits  of  departed  Willoughbys;  up 
a  grand  oak-balustraded  stairway;  and  then  by  bewildering 
corridors  to  two  bedrooms  side  by  side.  Hawkins  wanted 
Bernard's  keys  to  unpack  for  him,  but  Bernard  detested  the 
flunkeyism  with  which  the  well-to-do  English  surround  them- 
selves and  refused  this  service.  After  washing,  shaving 
and  changing  into  civilian  attire  he  went  into  Murray's  room, 
and  a  moment  later  Willoughby  arrived  and  led  them  down 
to  the  drawing-room  to  introduce  them  to  his  mother.  She 
was  a  tall,  pale,  delicate  woman,  who  received  them  with  a 
cordiality  that  was  transparently  superficial.  Her  husband, 
however,  a  fine  type  of  the  robust  English  country  gentle- 
man, did  much  to  set  them  at  their  ease.  They  were  en- 
gaged in  the  delicate  process  of  eating  thin  bread  and  butter 
and  drinking  china  tea  out  of  eggshell  balanced  on  their 
knees  when  three  other  young  men  entered  the  room,  who 
were  introduced  as: 

"  Mr.  Hastings,  Mr.  Moore,  and  my  eldest  son  Frank." 

Frank  Willoughby  was  just  an  older  version  of  Jack, 

somewhat    more    polished    and    somewhat    less    ingenuous. 

Hastings  was  a  rather  pompous  young  man,  fair  haired,  not 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  103 

over  tidy  in  his  dress,  and  obviously  not  in  the  best  physical 
training.  Moore  was  tall,  of  dark  complexion,  with  a 
slightly  bitter  smile  perpetually  hovering  over  his  lips.  High 
cheek  bones,  a  long  upper  lip,  and  a  shade  of  accent  showing 
through  the  Oxford  varnish  of  his  speech  proclaimed  the 
Irishman.  These  three  had  just  been  served  with  tea  when 
every  one  rose  at  the  entry  of  two  girls.  One,  Maud  Wil- 
loughby,  instantly  attracted  the  gaze  of  every  male  stranger 
in  the  room,  for  she  was  the  typical  English  beauty  of  maga- 
zine story  writers  and  illustrators.  She  knew  it,  and  she 
carried  herself  accordingly.  As  for  her  friend,  Janet  More- 
cambe,  the  minx  must  have  chosen  her  for  a  foil.  She  was 
small  and  shapeless,  and  save  for  a  pair  of  piercing  eyes, 
totally  undistinguished  in  appearance. 

A  light  conversation  began  and  rambled  along  pleasantly, 
and  Bernard,  looking  at  Maud's  profile,  decided  that  destiny 
had  been  kind  to  him.  He  almost  hated  Willoughby  for 
tearing  him  along  with  Murray  away  from  the  company, 
in  order,  as  he  said,  to  show  them  round  the  place. 
Throughout  the  process  he  was  so  absent  minded  and  dis- 
traught that  Murray  at  any  rate  found  little  difficulty  in 
diagnosing  the  cause. 

They  met  again  at  dinner,  when  Bernard  to  his  delight 
found  himself  placed  next  to  her.  At  first  the  ceremonial 
nature  of  the  meal  rather  oppressed  him.  The  great  size  of 
the  dining-room,  hung  with  the  usual  manorial  relics  of  the 
chase  and  the  glories  of  departed  days;  of  the  table  itself, 
and  of  the  other  appointments  of  the  room;  the  formality 
of  everything,  of  the  well-dressed  company,  of  the  statuesque 
and  attentive  menials,  of  the  whole  ritual  designed  to  com- 
plicate rather  than  to  comfort  this  everyday  process  of  as- 
similating nourishment;  all  this  weighed  upon  him  and  made 
him  nervous  and  anxious.  Also  he  was  reflecting  upon 
the  little  parody  of  all  this  time  honoured  observation  nightly 
performed  in  Merrion  Square.  A  glass  of  sherry  restored 
his  confidence  and  he  perceived  that  Maud  was  deliberately 
trying  to  entertain  and  interest  him. 


io4  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  I've  heard  a  great  deal  about  you  from  Jack,"  she  said. 
"  He's  always  talking  about  you." 

"  He  must  have  exhausted  all  the  good  he  had  to  say  very 
early,"  said  Bernard.  "  I  hope  he  was  discreet  about  the 
rest." 

"  He  tells  me  you're  a  terrible  Socialist,"  said  Maud. 

"  Nothing  terrible  about  me,  I  assure  you,"  said  Bernard. 
"  But  the  rest  is  true  enough." 

They  were  drawn  into  the  general  conversation  for  a  time. 
Old  Mr.  Willoughby  was  quite  the  most  talkative  person  in 
the  room  and  it  was  easy  to  set  his  hearty  laugh  going. 
Bernard  did  it  frequently.  Hastings  also  talked  a  good  deal, 
very  seriously  and  very  egotistically.  The  projected  insur- 
ance act  was  the  topic  of  the  day  and  he  was  an  ardent  sup- 
porter of  the  measure.  It  was  on  this  subject  that  Mrs. 
Willoughby  made  her  sole  contribution  to  the  conversation 
by  remarking  that  for  her  part  she  would  never  lick  stamps 
for  a  vulgar  little  Welsh  demagogue. 

"  Let  him  lick  them  himself  if  he  likes,"  she  added. 

The  two  Willoughbys  told  their  mother  that  this  wasn't 
practical  politics  and  diverted  the  conversation  to  pleasanter 
channels  such  as  the  prospects  for  the  Twelfth. 

Moore,  the  dark  Irishman,  took  little  part  in  the  conversa- 
tion, answering  briefly  when  directly  addressed  and  otherwise 
remaining  silent.  The  queer  little  bitter  smile  seldom  left 
his  lips. 

Bernard  and  Maud  returned  to  their  own  conversation. 
It  was  trifling  enough,  but  with  her  eyes  and  with  her  smile 
she  enmeshed  him  in  a  tangle  of  enchantment.  After  the 
ladies  had  withdrawn  he  moodily  gnawed  his  cigar  while  the 
other  men  chatted,  and  that  night  before  going  to  bed  he 
walked  among  the  cedars,  dreaming  about  her  under  the 


2 

Life  at  Willoughby  Towers  passed  very  pleasantly.     They 
rode  and  fished  and  played  tennis,  and  on  one  occasion  they 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  105 

watched  a  cricket  match  on  the  village  green.  They  mo- 
tored to  Warwick  and  to  Coventry  and  to  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  where  they  were  shown  over  Shakespeare's  house  by  a 
guide  who  recited  by  heart  a  guide-book  description  of  the 
place,  ending  up  with :  "  And  now,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
here  is  the  ingle  nook  in  which  no  doubt  the  bard  often  sat. 
Perhaps  you  would  like  to  sit  there  and  see  if  any  of  the 
noble  thoughts  which  inspired  him  might  come  to  your- 
selves." 

Conversation  flowed  pleasantly  in  the  evenings.  Mr. 
Willoughby  was  a  man  who  treated  youth  with  respect, 
differing  thus  from  Bernard's  father,  who  seemed  to  consider 
age  and  wisdom  synonymous,  and  treated  the  opinions  of 
his  juniors  either  with  contempt  if  he  disagreed  with  them 
or  with  exasperating  patronage  if  they  coincided  with  his 
own.  Mr.  Willoughby,  however,  was  inclined  to  the  hu- 
morous view  of  life.  Progressive  opinions  in  young  men 
he  received  with  a  tolerant  smile  and  the  prophecy  that 
they  would  wear  off  in  time.  His  contribution  to  a  social 
argument  that  sprang  up  one  evening  was  to  the  effect  that 
industrialism  itself  was  the  cause  of  poverty,  and  that  Eng- 
land would  not  be  herself  again  till  she  returned  to  the  good 
old  days  when  the  squire  paternally  ruled  his  tenants  and 
the  tenants  were  respectful  to  the  squire  and  all  was  agricul- 
tural bliss  and  harmony. 

"  But  your  very  socks  and  shirts  are  the  products  of  in- 
dustrialism," said  Bernard. 

"  I'd  cheerfully  go  back  to  homespuns,"  said  the  squire. 

"  And  give  up  your  motor?  "  queried  Bernard. 

"  There  are  flaws  in  my  theory,  I  know,"  said  Mr.  Wil- 
loughby. "  Well,  there  are  mor^e  in  Socialism.  But  I  can't 
help  thinking  the  world  was  a  happier  place  before  the  in- 
vention of  machinery. 

"  Happy,  but  inconvenient,"  said  Hastings. 

"  The  world  could  be  both  happy  and  convenient,"  put  in 
Mrs.  Willoughby,  "  if  politicians  wouldn't  stir  up  the  lower 
classes  and  make  them  discontented." 


io6  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

This  put  an  end  to  the  discussion,  for  nobody  cared  for 
the  futile  task  of  arguing  with  Mrs.  Willoughby. 

But  conversations  among  the  younger  members  of  the 
party  uninterfered  with  by  their  elders  frequently  took  place 
when,  the  weather  being  too  hot  for  tennis,  they  lay  basking 
in  the  sun  on  the  lawn.  All  aspired  to  be  politicians,  and  two 
of  them,  at  any  rate,  were  in  close  touch  with  existing  poli- 
tics; for  Hastings  was  the  son  of  a  Radical  M.P.,  and 
Murray's  father  was  prominent  in  the  United  Irish  League 
in  Liverpool.  Willoughby  compromised  between  Ashbury 
and  Bernard  by  developing  into  a  kind  of  Tory  Democrat, 
his  brother  Frank  being  a  Tory  pure  and  simple.  Murray 
was  a  democratic  Imperialist  and  Hastings  followed  his 
father's  principles.  Moore  appeared  to  have  no  politics.  He 
sat  apart  from  the  discussions  smoking  endless  cigarettes  and 
showing  no  sign  of  interest  beyond  an  extra  twitch  occa- 
sionally of  that  queer  smile  of  his.  As  for  Bernard  he 
intervened  occasionally  when  some  peculiarly  irritating  argu- 
ment dragged  him  from  dreams  of  Maud.  Maud  herself 
was  never  present  to  stimulate  him  to  eloquence,  but  her 
friend  Janet  frequently  joined  the  conclave  and  was  always 
decidedly  on  the  progressive  side. 

The  Liberal  program  of  land  legislation,  reform  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  payment  of  members,  national  insurance, 
and  Home  Rule  furnished  good  ground  for  controversy. 
Frank  was  against  it  in  toto.  The  world  was  a  fairly  com- 
fortable place,  he  said,  for  those  who  were  even  moderately 
well  off,  and  as  for  the  poor  they  were  an  inevitable  evil. 
There  had  always  been  poverty  and  there  always  would  be, 
so  it  was  no  use  trying  to  abolish  it.  Let  them  alleviate  it 
by  organized  Charity  if  they  wished.  As  for  the  proposed 
legislation  it  was  an  attempt  to  filch  government  from  the 
only  class  fitted  to  govern.  Privileged  classes  were  inevi- 
table, and  it  was  their  privileges  that  fitted  them  for  govern- 
ment. Payment  of  members  abolished  the  excellent  principle 
of  gratuitous  public  service  and  opened  parliament  to  needy 
professional  politicians.  Home  Rule,  of  course,  was  an 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  107 

absurdity.     They    might    as    well    restore    the    Heptarchy. 

This  line  of  argument  produced  violent  opposition  from 
Hastings,  who,  typically  English  himself,  made  no  attack 
on  the  false  premises  and  axioms  and  illogical  deductions  of 
his  opponent  but  simply  put  axiom  against  axiom  and  sub- 
stituted rhetorical  flourishes  for  reason.  He  was  for  gov- 
ernment of  the  people  by  the  people,  the  greatest  good  of 
the  greater  number  and  democratic  measures  generally. 
He  talked  of  the  anachronism  of  the  House  of  Lords  and  the 
anomaly  of  Dublin  Castle  Rule  and  proclaimed  equality 
of  opportunity  as  his  motto. 

But  Bernard  had  recently  been  reading  Shaw. 

"  What's  the  use  of  equality  of  opportunity,"  he  asked, 
"  if  you  don't  go  on  with  it?  It's  no  use  leaving  things  half 
done.  Equality  of  opportunity  is  no  use  when  there  isn't 
equality  of  ability.  I'm  for  pushing  the  thing  to  its  logical 
conclusion  and  establishing  complete  equality  of  income." 

"  Now,  Bernard,"  said  Willoughby,  "  you're  not  going  to 
get  in  a  lecture  on  Socialism.  We  all  know  that  it's  an 
infallible  remedy  in  theory  and  would  work  admirably  if 
the  whole  world  was  populated  by  perfectly  reasonable  be- 
ings like  you  and  Bernard  Shaw.  But  it  isn't." 

Bernard,  his  argumentative  energy  sapped  by  love-lorn 
dreams,  subsided  into  contemptuous  silence. 

"  I  take  it,"  resumed  Hastings,  "  that  the  British  Empire 
has  a  mission  of  freedom  to  preach  to  the  world.  How  can 
it  fulfil  that  mission  when  it  is  governed  by  a  worn  out 
feudal  system,  when  a  large  percentage  of  its  population  lives 
in  poverty,  ignorance  and  subjection,  and  when  the  Irish 
question  remains  as  a  running  sore  at  its  very  vitals?  " 

"  Free  Ireland,"  said  Murray,  "  and  she'll  be  the  loyalest 
spot  where  the  British  flag  flies." 

"  I  agree,"  said  Willoughby.  "  But  I  think  Hastings  is 
too  sweeping  in  his  notions.  I  grant  that  things  are  pretty 
bad  but  I  don't  think  our  system  itself  is  entirely  respon- 
sible. It  has  its  virtue  as  well  as  its  vices,  and  if  you  dis- 
card the  system  you  discard  its  virtues  along  with  it,  and 


io8  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

merely  let  yourself  in  for  a  new  system  with  all  sorts  of  new 
virtues  but  with  a  lot  of  new  vices  as  well.  A  radical 
change  would  simply  put  the  Empire  out  of  the  running  as  a 
civilizing  force.  It  would  turn  all  its  energy  in  on  itself." 

"  I'm  all  for  reforming  what  you've  got  instead  of  taking 
up  new  things,"  said  Murray.  "  I  take  it,  Willoughby, 
that  you  and  I  are  for  putting  a  reformed  British  Empire 
in  the  van  of  the  world's  progress." 

Willoughby  agreed. 

"  Set  a  streptococcus  to  cure  sepsis,"  interjected  Moore. 
It  was  his  first  remark  that  afternoon,  and  it  was  unintelli- 
gible to  his  hearers. 

"  What's  that?  "  some  one  asked. 

"  Good  lord !  "  said  Moore,  "  it  makes  me  laugh  to  hear 
you  fellows  gassing  away  like  a  lot  of  unsophisticated  school- 
girls about  a  world  you  know  nothing  about.  Reform  the 
British  Empire  by  a  lot  of  priggish  legislation!  My  hat! 
You  might  as  well  preach  vegetarianism  to  a  pack  of  wolves. 
Make  the  British  Empire  a  civilizing  force!  You  might  as 
well  make  burglars  into  policemen.  You  might  as  well 
set  out  to  evangelize  Hell  by  converting  the  devil." 

"  I  don't  think  that's  a  fair  way  to  describe  the  British 
Empire,"  objected  Willoughby. 

"  Well,  go  into  politics  and  you  soon  will." 

"  Great  Scott,  Fergus,"  said  Frank,  "  you're  the  deuce  of 
a  Rad.  I  never  knew  you  thought  that  sort  of  thing  before. 
Why  did  you  never  come  out  like  that  at  the  Union?  " 

"  Because  I'm  not  interested  in  politics." 

"  So  I  thought  once.  But,  good  lord,  you  know,  this 
speech  just  now "  He  paused,  wordless. 

"  Forget  it,"  said  Moore.  "  It  was  only  an  ebullition  of 
feeling." 

"  Don't  tell  me,"  said  Bernard,  "  that  you  aren't  interested 
in  politics." 

"  It's  quite  true." 

"But  why?" 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  109 

"  Politics  are  only  one  of  the  torments  of  this  Hell  we  call 
the  world." 

"  This  Hell?  "  asked  several. 

"  Yes.  I  agree  with  Father  Keegan  in  John  Bull's  Other 
Island  that  this  earth  is  Hell  and  that  we  are  here  being 
punished  for  sins  committed  in  a  former  existence.  Why? 
What's  the  worst  of  the  torments  of  Hell?  The  perpetual 
presence  of  devils,  of  course,  and  being  governed  and  played 
with  by  them.  Well,  isn't  that  the  way  the  world  is  run? 
The  rottenest  blackguards  are  the  successful  politicians  and 
it's  they  who  rule  us.  It  makes  me  fairly  sick  to  think 
that  I  can't  take  up  a  newspaper  without  seeing  a  eulogy 
of  some  dirty  grafter  or  an  illustrated  weekly  without  his 
photograph.  And  these  demons  make  our  laws,  take  charge 
of  our  money,  educate  us  and  deal  out  justice  to  us,  and 
when  they  quarrel  with  another  set  of  equally  infamous 
scoundrels  in  another  country  they  make  us  fight  their  quarrel 
and  pay  for  it,  and  when  it's  over  they  reap  the  reward  in 
collusion  with  the  other  scoundrels.  These  are  the  rulers. 
And  if  a  truly  great  and  noble  man  appears  and  shows  up 
this  tyranny  and  corruption  the  rulers  persecute  him  as  a 
traitor  and  criminal,  and  the  people  scorn  him  as  a  crank. 
Where  else  are  we  but  in  Hell,  where  the  wrong  always 
triumphs  over  the  right ;  where  the  great  men  are  the  suc- 
cessful robbers  and  the  great  nations  the  oppressors  of  the 
small?  And  to  crown  everything,  where  there  isn't  a  dirty 
deed  done  by  man  or  nation  that  won't  find  some  sancti- 
monious humbug  of  a  journalist  to  justify  or  extenuate  it. 
Ruled  by  devils  body  and  mind,  where  are  we  but  in  Hell  ?  " 

"  Moore's  a  pessimist,"  said  Hastings. 

"  Pessimist !  "  snorted  Moore.  "  I  wish  you  wouldn't  use 
cliches  you  don't  know  the  meaning  of.  You  English  rad- 
icals think  in  cliches." 

"  Your  cynicism  is  appalling,  Moore,"  said  Willoughby. 
"  The  world  isn't  one  fraction  as  bad  as  you  make  out." 

"  More  cliche.     What's  cynicism?  " 


i  io  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Willoughby  seemed  at  a  loss  to  explain.     Moore  went  on: 

"  Cynicism,  as  I  understand  it,  means  scoffing  at  sacred 
things,  or  taking  a  flippant  view  of  serious  things.  British 
politics  is  neither,  and  you've  no  more  right  to  call  me  cynic 
for  my  poor  opinion  of  them  than  I  have  to  call  you  senti- 
mentalist for  your  exalted  one.  Labels  and  phrases  are 
ruinous  to  reasoning." 

"  Party  politics,"  said  Bernard,  "  have  always  seemed  to 
me  to  be  a  huge  game.  They  can't  be  called  government. 
The  successful  politician  is  the  man  who  gets  his  wishes 
put  into  force  by  inducing  the  majority  of  the  people  to  vote 
for  him  on  some  other  issue." 

"  Not  a  bad  definition  at  all,"  said  Moore  approvingly. 

"  It  only  applies  to  the  Tories,"  said  Hastings  stoutly. 

"  Rot !  "  cried  Frank  Willoughby.  "  And  anyway,  if 
England's  to  boss  the  world  I'm  all  for  a  strong  navy  and 
cutting  out  politics  at  the  Admiralty." 

Moore  resumed  his  discourse  as  if  heedless  of  this  dia- 
logue. 

"  Two  mutually  contradictory  statements  cannot  both  be 
true,", he  said.  "  Yet  it  is  upon  the  denial  of  this  self-evident 
axiom  that  the  system  of  party  politics  is  based.  Under  the 
circumstances  government  is  carried  on  by  making  a  case 
for  what  may  well  be  the  worse  cause. 

"  Take  the  case  of  Ireland.  You  English  have  no  more 
right  there  than  you  have  in  the  moon.  That's  not  an 
opinion.  That's  truth  based  on  abstract  right  and  the  facts 
of  the  case.  The  only  thing  to  consider  then  is  whether 
your  presence  is  by  Ireland's  consent  and  whether  it  benefits 
her.  The  former  condition  you  know  to  be  untrue,  but  you 
don't  even  try  to  get  at  the  truth  of  the  latter.  One  party- 
supports  one  view,  the  other  supports  the  opposite,  and  either 
party  might  support  either  view  as  it  suited  them.  Then 
the  Unionist  crowd  finding  the  argument  going  against  them 
fall  back  on  the  line  that  whether  it's  good  for  Ireland  or 
not  England  must  keep  her;  and  the  Liberals,  beaten  in 
barefacedness,  make  a  compromise  and  bring  in  a  bill  to  give 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  in 

her  partial  freedom.  Meanwhile  the  two  parties  wrangle 
over  the  case  without  using  a  single  argument  that  is  ap- 
plicable or  vital  and  without  the  smallest  consideration  of 
truth  or  justice.  That's  British  politics." 

"  But  the  Irish  are  such  a  disloyal  crowd,"  said  Frank, 
whereat  Moore  burst  out  laughing  and  said : 

"  Look  here.  We've  had  enough  politics.  The  sun's  a 
bit  lower.  Let's  have  a  sett." 

Janet  drew  Bernard  aside  as  the  others  went  over  to  the 
tennis  courts.  He  yielded  to  her,  and  they  walked  through 
an  arch  of  roses  into  the  flower  garden. 

"  That  was  an  interesting  talk,"  said  Janet.  "  You  Irish 
are  certainly  our  intellectual  superiors.  You  and  Mr.  Moore 
were  the  only  people  who  got  anywhere  near  to  the  depths 
of  the  question  today." 

Bernard  began  to  stammer  some  modest  disclaimer,  but 
Janet  impatiently  resumed: 

"  Mr.  Hastings  and  myself,  and  perhaps  Jack  Willoughby 
are  all  democrats  in  a  kind  of  way.  But  it's  artificial  in  us. 
Bring  us  in  touch  with  working  people  and  we  show  at  once 
that  we  feel  we  are  a  race  apart.  But  democracy  seems  to 
come  naturally  to  you  Irish.  I  can't  imagine  you  or  Mr. 
Moore  doing  anything  snobbish." 

"  To  tell  you  the  truth,"  said  Bernard,  "  I've  only  just 
begun  to  realize  that  there's  any  difference  between  Irish 
and  English.  My  father's  a  fierce  old  Tory  and  Unionist, 
you  know." 

"  I've  a  tremendous  admiration  for  Ireland,"  said  Janet. 
"  I  think  she's  the  finest  nation  in  the  world." 

"  That's  strange,"  said  Bernard.  "  I  don't  know  any- 
thing at  all  about  her." 

"  You  ought  to  read,"  said  Janet. 

Bernard  watched  her  as  she  bent  her  graceless  figure  to 
gather  some  sweet  pea  for  her  belt.  He  was  thinking  of 
Maud.  Lately  she  had  seemed  to  take  pleasure  in  his  com- 
pany, and  that  morning  their  hands  had  met  momentarily 
and  he  fancied  that  hers  had  been  in  no  hurry  to  resign 


ii2  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

contact.  But  her  talk  was  a  little  vapid,  he  could  not  help 
feeling  in  spite  of  his  rapture  that  Janet  was  more  interest- 
ing and  her  voice  was  softer  and  pleasanter.  If  he  could 
only  hear  her  without  seeing.  .  .  .  There  was  something 
about  her  eyes  too,  especially  when  she  looked  at  him.  .  .  . 
Perhaps  .  .  . 

Life  was  a  complex  thing. 

And  then  came  Maud  along  the  path,  making  the  roses 
fairer. 

3 

Moore's  diatribe  on  politics  roused  intense  interest  and 
curiosity  in  Bernard,  and  on  the  first  occasion  on  which  he 
succeeded  in  finding  him  alone  he  began  questioning  him  on 
the  subject. 

"  You  don't  really  believe  all  that  tosh  about  this  being 
hell,  do  you  ?  "  he  demanded. 

"  Well,"  said  Moore,  throwing  away  his  cigjfrette  and 
lighting  another,  "  I  do  and  I  don't." 

It  was  a  fine  summer  evening  and  they  were  standing  in 
the  gravelled  space  before  the  house.  Bernard  drew  his  com- 
panion towards  the  avenue  as  he  spoke. 

"  Politics,"  said  Moore,  "  mean  different  things  to  different 
people.  To  some  they're  just  a  newspaper  topic  not  to  be 
taken  too  seriously.  To  you  they're  among  the  important 
things  of  life,  and  so  they  were  to  me  once,  though  in 
a  different  sense.  I  find  it  hard  to  explain  things  to  you, 
because  for  all  your  ability  and  honesty  your  upbringing  has 
left  a  gap  in  your  mind  and  soul  which  I  see  no  way  of  fill- 
ing. You  see,  you  belong  to  one  of  the  strangest  communi- 
ties of  men  that  ever  existed.  .  .  .  The  Cleruchs  of  the 
Athenian  Empire  seem  to  be  your  only  parallel  in  history, 
for,  like  them,  you  live  in  a  country  for  the  purpose  of  hold- 
ing it  for  another  country,  but,  unlike  them,  you  are  natives 
of  the  subject  country.  In  that  country  you  have  no  part. 
You  know  little  and  care  less  for  her  traditions;  you  don't 
observe  her  customs;  you  don't  think  as  she  does;  your  heroes 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  113 

are  not  her  heroes,  and  your  flag  is  not  her  flag ;  and  instead 
of  that  patriotism  which  is  a  natural  feeling  innate  in  every 
normal  man  you  have  a  bastard  thing  you  call  '  loyalty,' 
which  there  is  no  defining  and  which  is  nothing  more  in 
reality  than  the  fealty  which  a  garrison  owes  to  its  pay- 
masters. To  the  bulk  of  your  kind  politics  is  merely  the 
method  of  keeping  the  natives  in  subjection.  To  you,  who 
are  a  thinker,  and,  I  fancy,  one  of  those  people  who  are 
born  to  be  revolutionaries,  they  are  the  vital  goal  of  your 
reforming  aspirations,  but  since  your  origin  has  made  you  a 
man  without  a  country  you're  developing  into  a  sort  of  cosmo- 
politan doctrinaire,  and  the  whole  basis  and  foundation  of 
my  politics  must  seem  to  you  small  and  feeble." 

"  Let's  have  it,  anyway,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Well,  I'm  one  of  the  natives  whom  your  crowd  keeps  in 
subjection,  and  to  us  the  question  of  ending  that  subjection 
is  the  most  important  thing  in  our  politics.  To  you  Eng- 
land and  Ireland  are  more  or  less  one  and  the  same.  You 
have  never  read  the  history  which  would  have  told  you 
that  the  one  is  the  implacable  enemy  of  the  other,  has  ruined 
her  and  is  continuing  to  ruin  her.  Irish  politics  to  you, 
supposing  you  to  adopt  Home  Rule  as  part  of  your  progres- 
sive creed,  is  merely  a  question  of  methods  of  government. 
To  us  it  is  a  question  of  our  existence.  Now  the  passage 
of  time  and  the  confusion  of  thought  natural  to  ordinary 
men  have  left  this  whole  business  very  complicated  and  two- 
sided  to  the  superficial  observer,  but  I  found  out  very  early 
in  life  that  the  truth  at  the  bottom  of  every  question  is 
simple  and  easy  to  find  if  you  disregard  the  side  issues  raised 
by  those  interested  in  obscuring  it.  It  was  enough  for  me 
to  read,  and  when  I  was  twelve  I  was  an  emotional  sep- 
aratist and  by  seventeen  a  logical  one. 

"  You  know  nothing  about  ninety-eight  and  the  United 
Irishmen.  These  words  bring  no  thrill  to  your  spine,  so 
you'll  find  it  hard  to  appreciate  my  feelings  when  I  went 
down  to  the  local  branch  of  the  United  Irish  League  ex- 
pecting to  be  presented  with  a  pike  and  a  revolver,  and 


ii4  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

was  offered  instead  a  resolution  of  confidence  to  vote  for. 

"  Well,  I  found  in  that  league  of  professed  patriots  noth- 
ing but  cant  and  self  deception.  I  won't  go  into  that.  One 
example  of  the  kind  of  thing  is  enough.  They  were  going 
to  aqcept  that  emasculated  measure  called  Home  Rule  as 
a  final  settlement.  Of  course  I  objected  to  that,  so  they 
consoled  me  by  saying  that  this  was  a  piece  of  deception 
necessary  to  success.  Well,  I  don't  mind  deceiving  the 
enemy,  but  that  piece  of  deception  deceived  themselves  and 
deceived  the  Irish  people,  and  it'll  be  the  destruction  of  the 
whole  movement  eventually. 

"  Of  course  I  learnt  sense  in  the  League.  An  apprecia- 
tion of  relative  values  was  enough  to  show  me  the  futility  of 
force  and  the  necessity  of  diplomacy,  but  soon  I  began  to 
realize  the  futility  of  diplomacy  also.  If  you've  followed 
Irish  politics  at  all  you'd  see  how  our  party  is  beaten  and 
bamboozled  at  every  turn.  I've  a  symbol  in  my  mind  for 
our  present  state  of  affairs:  a  dwarf  with  a  sword  fighting 
a  giant  finds  he  can't  win,  so  throws  away  his  sword  and 
appeals  to  the  giant's  reason.  Somewhat  futile,  eh?  Well, 
when  I  realized  that  force  was  useless  and  reasoning  absurd 
I  began  to  despair,  and  it  was  then  that  this  predestined  and 
perpetual  triumph  of  might  over  right  first  made  me  in- 
clined to  agree  with  Father  Keegan,  not  literally,  you  know, 
but  as  a  sort  of  gratification  of  a  feeling  of  poetical  futility. 
So  you  see  me  at  twenty-three  quite  convinced  that  Ireland 
is  a  hopeless  case,  and  while  I  refuse  homage  to  England 
I've  no  intention  of  wasting  my  time  in  a  futile  struggle 
against  her." 

"  There's  a  fellow  I  know  at  Ashbury,"  said  Bernard, 
"  who  holds  all  the  principles  that  you  do,  but  he  hasn't 
given  up  hope." 

"  He's  young,"  said  Moore. 

"  I  think,"  said  Bernard,  "  if  I  once  had  the  truth  and  the 
facts  of  the  case  and  really  felt  that  the  cause  was  mine,  I'd 
go  on  until  I  found  a  way  out." 

"  It  would  be  sheer  waste  of  time.     I've  come  to  the  con- 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  115 

elusion  that  the  affairs  of  this  world  aren't  really  worth 
bothering  about  at  all.  Look  at  that  star.  It's  billions  of 
miles  away.  It's  perhaps  ten  times  the  size  of  our  sun, 
yet  how  small  it  appears.  Look  at  this  whole  universe  of 
stars,  all  immense,  all  infinitely  far  away.  Now  imagine 
yourself  withdrawn  into  space  of  billions  of  billions  of  miles 
until  all  these  stars  that  we  see  coalesce  into  a  point  of  light 
such  as  one  star  seems  to  us  now.  What  insignificant  specks 
are  men  now,  and  how  contemptible  their  affairs !  " 

"  I  don't  agree,"  said  Bernard.  "  Size  is  an  accident 
and  not  frightfully  impressive  when  you  see  enough  of  it. 
Besides,  everything  has  an  intrinsic  value  which  isn't  altered 
by  its  relative  value  to  other  things." 

"Humph!"  said  Moore.  "You're  a  better  philosopher 
than  I  am." 

They  had  passed  the  gate  and  gone  some  distance  down 
the  road.  They  now  turned  and  retraced  their  steps. 

"  I'm  an  unfortunate  man,"  Moore  suddenly  exclaimed. 
"  Everything  I  touch  seems  to  go  wrong.  ...  I  fell  in 
love  with  Maud  last  year  and  she  seemed  to  encourage  me. 
I  came  here  this  summer  with  the  full  intention  of  proposing 
to  her,  and  what  must  she  do  but  fall  in  love  with  the  first 
sight  of  your  handsome  face." 

Bernard's  heart  leaped.  In  his  exultation  the  misery  of 
his  companion  was  nothing  to  him. 

"  Do  you  —  do  you  really  mean  that?  "  he  asked  timidly. 

"  I'm  afraid  I  do." 

Up  the  avenue  they  went,  the  light  hearted  and  the  heavy 
hearted  side  by  side. 

"  She  loves  me,  she  loves  me,"  Bernard  kept  saying  to 
himself,  and  could  hardly  sleep  for  joy. 

4 

But  the  lyrical  exaltation  of  the  night  gave  place  to  doubt 
and  hesitation  in  the  cold  light  of  day. 

"  Love  me?  What  does  Moore  know  about  it?  He's 
not  infallible.  She  encouraged  him  once." 


ii6  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

He  was  abnormally  sensitive,  and  feared  a  rebuff  should 
he  presume  too  far  on  insufficient  evidence. 

Then  in  the  morning  he  encountered  Janet,  and  they  had 
an  extremely  interesting  talk,  political  and  philosophical. 
The  attraction  exercised  by  her  mind  for  his  was  undeniable, 
but  Bernard  did  not  want  to  fall  in  love  with  this  ungraceful 
being.  Why  the  devil  did  she  obtrude  upon  his  idyll? 

And  later  on. 

"  She'd  laugh  at  me,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  She's  lived 
all  her  life  in  luxury.  It'll  be  five  years  before  I've  a  pro- 
fession and  five  more  before  I  could  marry.  What  a  ro- 
mantic ass  I  am !  " 

Abruptly  he  began  to  think  of  Moore. 

"  Bet  he  makes  half  his  melancholy  for  himself,"  he  mut- 
tered. "  I'm  not  going  to  get  like  that." 

The  Irish  question  thrust  itself  on  his  attention. 

"  Queer  business,"  he  said.  "  Doesn't  seem  to  appeal  to 
me  somehow.  Haven't  any  grip  of  the  essentials.  Don't 
know  enough  about  it." 

He  resolved  to  seek  information. 

Wandering  through  the  gardens  in  the  fresh  morning  air 
he  came  upon  Moore  and  Murray  arguing  in  a  pseudo- 
rustic  bovver. 

"  Rubbish !  "  Moore  was  saying.  "  This  partnership  stunt 
simply  won't  work.  Even  if  all  the  material  points  you 
make  were  granted  (and  I  don't  grant  them)  there's  the 
spiritual  objection.  The  two  countries  are  incompatible, 
and  that's  the  long  and  the  short  of  it.  The  tradition,  spirit, 
and  purpose  of  the  one  are  absolutely  hostile  to  those  of  the 
other.  You  couldn't  find  common  ground  for  Tone  and 
Castlereagh,  could  you  ?  " 

"  I  suppose  not." 

"  Neither  could  you  for  the  countries  they  served.  Where 
one  man's  patriot  is  another  man's  traitor  what  is  their 
common  interest?  " 

"  Those  days  are  past." 

"  Yes.     But  not  done  with." 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  117 

"  The  modern  Liberal  spirit  has  changed  everything." 

"  Only  the  phrases.     Not  the  realities." 

"  I  don't  agree  with  you." 

"  I  don't  care  whether  you  do  or  not.  Ten  years  hence, 
when  Home  Rule  is  no  nearer  than  it  is  today,  you  will." 

Moore  observed  Bernard  at  the  entrance  to  the  bower. 
Pointing  to  Murray  he  said: 

"  Here's  a  man  who  believes  in  the  English." 

"What's  wrong  with  the  English?"  asked  Bernard. 

"  Oh,  nothing  at  all.  Nothing  at  all,  except  that  they're 
the  most  selfish,  self-satisfied,  hypocritical,  vulgar,  material- 
istic people  on  the  face  of  the  earth." 

He  went  on  in  a  kind  of  litany: 

"  The  English  have  grabbed  half  the  world,  and  yet  they're 
never  done  talking  of  freedom.  They  pretend  to  believe 
that  their  empire  was  come  by  honestly  and  humanely. 

"  The  English  can  never  see  any  point  of  view  but  their 
own. 

"  The  English  expect  gratitude  for  injuries  given.  The 
Russians  have  conquered  Poland  but  they  don't  expect  them 
to  be  '  loyal.'  The  English  are  always  preaching  '  loyalty  ' 
to  Ireland. 

"  The  Englishman  thinks  that  lapse  of  time  can  wipe  out 
any  crime.  They  forgive  and  forget  all  their  own  offences. 

"  The  English  are  more  self  opinionated  than  all  the  rest 
of  mankind  put  together.  If  some  scandal  in  the  govern- 
ment of  their  Empire  is  revealed  they  talk  of  '  un-English  ' 
methods.  We  Irish,  from  our  experience  of  them,  know 
better.  We  drop  the  '  un.' 

"  The  English  are  so  self-satisfied  that  satire  doesn't  hurt 
them. 

"  Prove  a  case  to  an  Englishman  with  the  simplest, 
straightest  logic;  prove  it  up  to  the  hilt,  and  he'll  only  say: 
'  Yes.  I  quite  see  your  point.  There's  something  in  what 
you  say.' 

"  Oh,  but  they're  damned  fools.  They  think  in  phrases 
and  mixed  metaphors  and  they  never  follow  an  idea  as  far  as 


n8  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

it'll  go.  Their  philosophy  is  summed  up  in  priggish  proverbs 
and  their  morality  in  tuppenny  maxims. 

"  Complete  summary  of  the  English  mind.  Captain  of 
sinking  ship :  '  Now,  men,  be  British.'  " 

"  Oh,  damn  the  English !  "  he  concluded,  and  lit  another 
cigarette. 

"  You're  an  irreconcilable,"  said  Murray. 

"  You've  lived  too  long  in  England,"  retorted  Moore. 
"  That's  just  what  I  expected  you  to  say." 

"  Chuck  it,  both  of  you,"  interrupted  Bernard.  "  Come 
out  and  enjoy  the  sunshine." 

They  found  Willoughby  and  walked  to  Deeping  and  back 
before  lunch.  The  pleasant  agricultural  country-side  seemed 
to  bask  as  much  in  its  own  prosperity  as  in  the  sun.  Bernard 
mentally  compared  the  neat  pretty  village  with  those  he  had 
seen  in  Ireland,  but  said  nothing  for  fear  of  eliciting  another 
diatribe  from  Moore.  They  drank  lemonade  in  the  clean 
cool  parlour  of  a  picturesque  inn  which  suggested  fresh  com- 
parisons. 

On  the  way  home  Bernard  found  an  opportunity  to  say 
to  Moore: 

"  You  remember  that  symbol  of  yours  about  the  dwarf 
and  the  giant?  How  would  it  do  if  the  dwarf  took  to  per- 
suasion without  giving  up  his  sword?  Sort  of  drive  home 
his  points,  wouldn't  it?  " 

"  Especially  when  the  giant  is  at  heart  a  coward,"  added 
Moore.  . , 

5 

Mrs.  Willoughby  gave  a  small  dance  the  night  before  her 
guests'  departure,  and  Maud,  for  reasons  best  known  to 
herself,  put  on  her  most  ravishing  frock  for  the  occasion. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  she  was  slightly  in  love  with  Bernard, 
and  she  felt  that  during  the  last  couple  of  days  he  had  not 
been  doing  his  duty.  She  had  observed  a  certain  slackening 
in  his  attentions,  and  her  preparations  were  made  with  the 
object  of  revivifying  them. 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  119 

And  Bernard  failed  to  respond.  Nay,  he  gave  at  least 
four  dances  to  her  friend  Janet.  Could  it  be  possible 
that ?  No.  Absurd. 

The  truth  was  that  the  hard  facts  of  life  were  too  much 
for  Bernard.  He  dared  not  make  the  plunge,  weighted  as 
he  was  with  the  prospect  of  those  ten  years.  He  asked  for 
three  dances  only,  and  she  punished  him  by  refusing  to  grant 
the  third,  and  by  giving  half  a  dozen  to  young  Slitherly,  a 
neighbour.  Bernard  saw  here  an  age-long  romance  and 
sadly  took  it  as  his  conge. 

To  all  else  the  dance  was  a  most  enjoyable  affair.  To 
Maud  it  was  an  exasperation ;  to  Bernard  a  torture.  Their 
second  dance  together  was  towards  the  end  of  the  evening. 
Maud  pleaded  fatigue  so  they  retired  to  a  conservatory  to 
sit  it  out.  All  the  story-book  accessories  to  romance  were 
present ;  drooping  palms,  the  scent  of  flowers ;  the  half-light ; 
the  music  in  the  distance.  Maud  gazed  with  her  wonderful 
eyes  into  his;  her  elbow,  on  the  arm  of  her  chair,  came  in 
contact  with  his;  her  hair  fluttered  in  the  faint  breeze. 
She  gave  him  many  conversational  openings,  but  he  was  in  a 
mood  of  such  blank  pessimism  that  he  gave  no  heed  to  the 
most  obvious,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  dance  they 
parted  in  silence. 

So  ended  his  first  romance. 

Next  day  the  house  party  broke  us.  Bernard  got  a  stiff 
farewell  from  Mrs.  Willoughby  and  a  genial  one  from  her 
husband. 

"  Come  again  soon,"  he  said. 

"  Good-bye,  old  man.  See  you  at  Magdalen,"  said  Wil- 
loughby at  the  station. 

6 

But  a  disappointment  awaited  Bernard  when  he  reached 
home. 

A  fashionable  physician's  life  is  a  vicious  circle:  he  must 
live  expensively  in  order  to  have  a  big  practice,  and  he  must 
have  a  big  practice  in  order  to  live  expensively.  When  in 
addition  he  is  lavishly  hospitable,  has  extravagant  tastes  in 


120  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

wine  and  cigars,  and  has  a  reputation  as  an  art  connoisseur 
to  maintain,  life  ceases  to  be  an  economic  proposition.  In 
order  to  keep  the  glitter  and  the  luxury,  necessities  must  go 
by  the  board,  and  in  many  a  Merrion  Square  mansion  more 
money  is  spent  on  cigars  than  on  butter,  on  entertaining  one's 
friends  than  on  educating  one's  children.  Then  a  knight 
has  to  pay  heavier  for  everything  than  the  simple  and  un- 
adorned, so  one  day  Sir  Eugene  realized  that  he  must  pull 
in  somewhere.  Humming  and  hawing  he  approached  his 
son. 

"  I'm  afraid,  old  chap,"  he  said,  "  that  money  matters  are 
going  a  bit  hard  with  me  at  present.  I've  been  having  a 
lot  of  expenses  lately  and  some  investments  I've  made  haven't 

turned  out  too  well.  So  you  see Oxford's  a  damned 

expensive  place "  (This  he  jerked  out  suddenly.  Ber- 
nard's eyes  made  humming  and  hawing  impossible.) 
"  Damned  expensive,"  he  re-iterated.  "  I  wouldn't  like  to 
send  my  son  there  unless  I  could  give  him  enough  money 
so  as  he  could  shine  as  well  as  any  one  else.  No  poor 
hard-working  scholars  for  me.  How  will  Trinity  suit 
you?  " 

Bernard,  bitterly  disappointed,  said  it  would  have  to  do. 
It  was  a  hard  blow  to  him.  It  meant  losing  all  his  hopes 
and  projects,  all  the  grand  talks  and  theorizings  he  had 
promised  himself,  all  his  plans  for  galvanizing  the  academic 
heart  of  the  Empire  with  revolutionary  ideas.  Also  it  meant 
losing  Willoughby. 

"  There  are  worse  Universities  than  Trinity,"  said  his  fa- 
ther, observing  his  troubled  face. 

A  few  days  afterwards  Bernard  met  Geoffrey  Manders  on 
the  beach  at  Bundoran.  Manders  was  a  Clongownian  but 
they  had  been  at  the  same  preparatory  school  and  had  fre- 
quently met  afterwards  when  on  holiday.  They  had  many 
tastes  in  common,  both  literary  and  artistic,  and  they  both 
held  cosmopolitan  and  socialistic  views.  Bernard  told  him 
of  the  change  in  his  prospects  and  Manders  said : 

"  Yes.     Trinity's  pretty  small  beer  compared  with  Oxford. 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  121 

Look  here,  why  not  strike  out  a  new  line  entirely  and  come 
to  the  National?  I've  just  got  my  Matric  there." 

The  National  University,  only  just  founded,  was  but  a 
name  to  Bernard. 

"  I'll  think  about  it,"  he  said. 

"  It's  something  new  in  Universities,"  said  Manders. 
"  No  traditions  about  it  at  all.  Trinity's  just  a  second  rate 
Oxford.  Quite  as  musty  and  not  half  so  magnificent. 
You'd  only  stifle  there.  It's  a  mere  Rathmines  university, 
if  you  know  what  I  mean.  The  National's  new.  It  may 
be  a  bit  shoddy,  but  we  might  make  something  of  it." 

"  The  notion  rather  appeals  to  me,"  said  Bernard. 

"  You  wouldn't  half  shine  there,  Mr.  Public  Schoolman," 
said  Manders. 

"  After  all,"  said  Bernard,  "  there's  a  good  deal  to  be  said 
for  a  University  that  isn't  a  Varsity. 

When  he  returned  to  town  in  September  he  announced 
his  intention  of  taking  the  National  University  Matricula- 
tion. 

"  Good  lord!  "  exclaimed  Sir  Eugene.  "What  on  earth 
for?" 

"  I  don't  much  care  for  a  tuppenny  tin  imitation  of  Ox- 
ford. Besides,  I'd  like  to  be  with  chaps  of  my  own  reli- 
gion." (This  with  his  tongue  very  much  in  his  cheek.) 

"  I  suppose  that  settles  it,"  said  Sir  Eugene.  "  Got  re- 
ligious again  ?  " 

"  Partially,"  said  Bernard. 

"  And  now,"  said  Sir  Eugene,  "  what  have  you  decided  to 
do  in  life?  " 

"  Well,  I  want  to  go  into  politics,  so  I  suppose  the  best 
opening  is  to  go  for  the  bar." 

"  Politics!  "  exclaimed  Sir  Eugene.  "  What  do  you  want 
to  go  in  for  politics  for?  " 

"  I  have  ideas  .  .  .  and  plans." 

"  Oh !  Out  to  reform  the  world,  eh  ?  The  usual  disease 
at  your  age.  .  .  .  Well,  why  not  try  the  Indian  Civil  Serv- 
ice, eh?" 


122  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"Well  ...  no,  thanks.  That's  not  quite  the  sort  of 
politics  I  meant.  Besides  I'm  not  keen  on  living  in  the 
tropics." 

"  But  politics  in  this  benighted  country  are  no  good. 
You'd  be  a  struggling,  briefless  barrister  until  you  were  mid- 
dle aged,  and  I  couldn't  afford  to  keep  you  all  that  time. 
...  As  for  England,  it's  out  of  the  question.  You'd  find 
the  Irish  bar  difficult  enough,  but  over  there  you'd  be  quite 
unknown  .  .  .  might  starve  eventually.  When  my  finan- 
cial affairs  were  better  I'd  planned  some  such  career  for  you, 
but  I'm  afraid  it's  impossible  now.  You'd  better  put  politics 
out  of  your  head,  because,  in  addition  to  the  other  diffi- 
culties, our  party  hasn't  any  seats  outside  Ulster  and 
Trinity,  in  neither  of  which  you'd  have  a  ghost  of  a 
chance." 

"  You  quite  misunderstand  me,"  said  Bernard.  "  If  you 
say  the  bar  is  out  of  the  question,  I  suppose  it  is.  Let  me 
take  out  a  course  of  economics  in  the  University  and  then 
let  me  try  and  make  a  living  by  journalism  in  London  until 
I  can  make  my  way  into  politics.  ...  I  don't  mean  the 
kind  of  politics  you  imagine,  of  course.  The  fact  is,  I'm  a 
sort  of  ...  Socialist." 

"  A  Socialist  I  " 

There  was  as  much  scorn  as  anger  in  Sir  Eugene's  tone. 
This  was  for  him  a  totally  unexpected  development. 

"  Since  when,  may  I  ask?  "  he  demanded. 

"  A  long  time,"  said  Bernard. 

"  No  politics  for  you,  my  boy,"  said  Sir  Eugene,  in  his 
most  determined  manner.  "  It  would  be  a  nice  thing  for 
me  to  have  a  Socialist  M.P.  for  a  son,  wouldn't  it?  Where 
would  my  practice  go  to  then,  do  you  think?  And  what 
would  become  of  your  mother  and  sisters?  You  must  think 
of  other  people  occasionally,  you  know.  ...  I  never  imag- 
ined you  could  be  so  selfish." 

The  argument  dragged  on  for  twenty  minutes  or  more, 
and  finally  Bernard  was  bullied  into  acquiescing  to  his  fa- 
ther's point  of  view.  As  the  least  of  numerous  evils  he 


WILLOUGHBY  TOWERS  123 

chose  the  medical  profession.  Sir  Eugene  having  got  his 
way  at  once  assumed  a  more  conciliatory  tone. 

"  It's  a  noble  profession,  my  boy.  You'll  spend  your  life 
in  the  service  of  suffering  humanity,  which  I  think  is  the 
highest  aim  a  man  could  have." 

"  That's  to  appease  my  wounded  Socialism,"  thought  Ber- 
nard. 

His  hopes  and  ambitions  had  received  a  shattering  blow. 
He  lay  awake  that  night,  tossing  about  and  fretting  under 
his  disappointments. 

"  A  Merrion  Square  doctor  ...  me  I  ...  After  all  my 
dreams.  ...  I,  who  have  ideas  to  give  to  the  world,  to 
spend  my  life  sitting  by  the  bedside  of  hypochondriacal  old 
ladies!  .  .  .  Good  lord!  .  .  ." 

There  are  those  who  will  be  inclined  to  smile  at  the  idea 
of  this  boy  of  eighteen  confidently  planning  to  reform  the 
world,  but  if  it  were  not  for  the  bold-thinking,  arrogant, 
broad-scheming  young  men  who  have  dreamed  through  the 
ages  where  would  the  world  be  now?  Bernard's  mind  as  a 
matter  of  fact  was  of  singularly  fine  quality.  There  were  no 
shams  about  him.  He  had  no  taboos.  He  never  sought  to 
make  thinking  easier  by  the  common  method  of  fixing  labels. 
If  he  was  hasty  and  intolerant  in  his  ideas,  at  any  rate  his 
ideas  were  on  the  generous  side,  and  personal  interest  counted 
with  him  not  at  all.  He  felt  injustice  in  any  quarter  of  the 
world  or  at  any  period  of  time  more  acutely  than  any  per- 
sonal grievance:  Thucydides'  narratire  of  the  massacre  of 
Melos  roused  as  hot  emotion  in  him  as  Bernard  Shaw's  ac- 
count of  the  Denshawai  atrocity.  His  thoughts  and  sympa- 
thies and  ambitions  were  world-wide,  the  sorrows  of  man- 
kind were  his  sorrows,  and  the  removal  of  those  sorrows  was 
his  ambition.  He  wanted  to  see  the  world  clean  and  orderly 
and  busy:  the  city  of  his  childish  games  grown  large.  And, 
here  entered  his  boyish  vanity,  he  burned  to  be  the  principal 
figure  in  making  it  so. 

"  A  respectable  G.P.,"  he  muttered  in  his  sleepless  tum- 
bling. "  Lord  save  me  from  respectability  anyhow," 


CHAPTER  VI 

DUBLIN 


AT  five  o'clock  on  an  afternoon  in  October  Bernard  and 
Geoffrey  Manders  sat  sipping  coffee  in  the  smoking- 
room  of  a  Grafton  Street  tea-shop,  amid  a  crowd  consisting 
of  University  students,  business  men,  clerks  and  loiterers, 
with  here  and  there  a  girl  under  male  escort.  Attendants 
bustled  about.  The  air  was  full  of  the  clatter  of  china, 
the  hum  of  conversation,  and  the  fumes  of  cigarette  smoke. 

"  Well,  it's  a  great  college,"  Bernard  was  saying.  "  I 
found  it  a  bit  hard  to  get  my  bearings  at  first  though.  An 
English  public  school  is  full  of  people  you  can't  speak  to, 
either  because  they're  infinitely  far  above  you  or  abysmally 
far  beneath  you.  ...  In  U.C.D.  a  freshman  can  talk  to 
a  final  man  without  feeling  he's  condescended  to.  Then 
there's  such  a  general  air  of  friendliness:  no  cliques  that 
snub  you  if  you  butt  in  on  their  conversation.  Every  one's 
free  to  move  and  talk  as  he  likes,  and  there  are  no  damned 
taboos  and  questions  6f  Form.  Good  lord,  it's  such  a  change! 
When  I  was  at  Ashbury  I  was  a  sort  of  herald  of  revolt; 
almost  the  only  fellow  in  the  place  that  had  an  idea  in  his 
skull.  .  .  .  Here  it's  all  ideas.  If  I  talk  Socialism  I'm 
argued  with.  One  man  will  attack  me  for  an  economic 
fallacy,  another  for  a  lapse  in  logic,  and  another  has  an 
economic  theory  of  his  own.  At  Ashbury  they  simply  said, 
'  If  you're  a  Socialist  you  can't  be  a  gentleman,'  and  that 
closed  the  argument  as  far  as  they  were  concerned." 

"  I'm  sure  Ashbury  had  its  points,"  said  Manders.     "  And 
I'll  bet  opposition  like  that  did  you  good." 
124 


DUBLIN  125 

"  No.     It  was  merely  exasperating." 

A  tall,  lanky  man  with  black  hair  and  loose-lipped  mouth 
came  over  to  their  table  and  addressed  Bernard. 

"  I  say,  what  the  blazes  did  you  cut  dissecting  for  this 
morning?  I  had  to  do  those  deep  pectorals  by  myself." 

"  Sorry,  old  chap,"  replied  Bernard.  "  I  simply  couldn't 
help  it.  I  was  dancing  till  three  last  night,  at  Lady  Bart- 
ley's." 

"  God  bless  our  aristocracy!  "  said  the  other,  raising  his 
hat  reverently. 

"  That,"  said  Bernard,  lowering  his  voice,  "  was  spoken 
for  the  benefit  of  a  young  gentleman  in  the  middle  distance. 
I  want  to  attract  him  over  here." 

"Well,  I'm  off.     Be  down  tomorrow,  won't  you?" 

"  Who's  that  ?  "  asked  Manders,  when  the  stranger  had 
gone. 

"  Chap  called  Crowley.  My  dissecting  partner.  .  .  . 
Ah!  How  are  you,  Molloy?  How's  the  world  treating 
you?  Let  me  introduce  my  friend  Mr.  Manders.  Mr. 
Manders,  Mr.  Molloy."  This  to  a  smug  young  man  who 
had  been  hovering  near-by  during  the  conversation  with 
Crowley. 

"  Rottenly,"  said  Molloy.  "  I  say,  did  you  ever  hear  such 
luck  as  this?  My  pater  made  me  go  up  for  the  entrance 
exam  to  both  Trinity  and  the  National,  and  I  got  plucked  by 
Trinity,  so  I'm  doing  law  in  this  damned  awful  cheap  low 
down  hole  on  Stephen's  Green." 

"  That's  rotten  luck,"  Bernard  agreed.  "  Awful  types 
one  does  meet  there,  I'm  sure." 

"  Awful,"  said  Molloy. 

"  Types  like  Manders  and  me,  for  instance." 

"  I  say,"  gasped  Molloy,  taken  aback,  "  I'm  awfully  sorry, 
you  know.  I  didn't  really  mean  anything." 

"  We'll  pardon  you,"  said  Manders. 

"  I  say,  I  hope  I  haven't  hurt  your  feelings." 

"  Oh,  they're  used  to  it.     Tol  lol,  old  son." 

Molloy  took  himself  off,  looking  very  foolish. 


126  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Fine  type  of  manly  Britisher,"  said  Bernard  to  Manders. 
"  Made  at  Ashbury." 

"Pooh!  He  might  have  been  made  anywhere.  Geog- 
raphy doesn't  account  for  types." 

At  this  moment  Bernard  saw  Brian  Mallow  enter  the 
room  along  with  a  burly,  jovial  and  untidy  companion.  As 
they  approached  our  friends'  table  the  latter  hailed  Man- 
ders in  jocular  fashion  and  Mallow  came  over  to  shake 
hands  with  Bernard. 

"  Sit  down  with  us,"  said  Manders,  and  ordered  more 
coffee. 

Mallow  introduced  the  burly  young  man  to  Bernard  as 
McGurk,  and  Bernard  introduced  Manders  to  Mallow. 

"  Another  Ashburian,"  said  Manders.  "  Lord,  but  the 
college  swarms  with  them." 

"  None  of  your  old  Ashburian  for  me,"  growled  Mallow. 
"  I'm  done  with  the  rotten  hole." 

"  Mallow  might  just  as  well  have  been  at  Clongowes  for 
all  the  difference  Ashbury 's  made  in  him,"  said  McGurk. 

"  You're  talking  through  your  hat,  McGurk,  as  usual," 
said  Manders.  "  Since  I  came  to  college  I've  been  studying 
the  products  of  the  different  schools  and  I've  got  them  all 
pretty  well  ticked  off.  Clongownians  are  consciously  cocks 
of  the  walk  here.  They're  the  Etonians  of  Ireland.  Would 
you  like  to  hear  the  rest?  " 

There  was  a  murmur  of  assent. 

"  Belviderians  are  genteel.  They  feel  that  they  ought  to 
be  the  premier  school  but  they  know  that's  hopeless  for  a 
day  school,  so  what  they  lose  in  prestige  they  make  up  for  in 
gentility.  Castleknock  men  are  conscientiously  rowdy 
whether  they  feel  like  it  or  not  because  they've  a  reputation 
for  toughness  to  keep  up.  McGurk's  a  Castleknock  man. 
Mungretians  are  dark  and  mysterious,  which  is  only  natural, 
for  nobody  knows  where  Mungret  is.  I  wouldn't  be  sur- 
prised, Lascelles,  if  your  friend  Crowley's  from  Mungret." 

"Wrong.     He's  from  Blackrock." 

"  I  haven't  analysed  Blackrock  yet.     But,  by  the  way,  be- 


DUBLIN  127 

tween  clerics  and  national  school  men,  this  College  is  going 
to  the  dogs." 

"  You're  right  about  the  Clerics,"  said  McGurk. 

"  The  National  Schoolmen  call  the  Professors  '  Teacher  ' 
and  always  seem  to  be  expecting  a  walloping." 

"  They  need  it,"  said  McGurk. 

"  You're  a  bally  snob,  Manders,"  said  Mallow. 

"  I'm  not.  I'm  only  stating  facts.  The  problem  for  us 
is  to  make  this  place  a  real  University,  and  the  sooner  we 
recognize  the  obstacles  the  better.  One  of  the  obstacles  is 
the  type  of  mind  produced  by  our  beautiful  National 
Schools." 

"  We  were  at  the  Abbey  last  night,"  said  McGurk. 

"What  was  on?" 

"  The  Playboy.  Lord !  You  should  have  seen  Mallow 
writhing  in  his  seat." 

"  The  play's  a  bloody  insult  to  the  country,"  said  Mallow. 
"  It  ought  to  be  stopped." 

"  Who  by?  "  asked  Manders. 

"  The  people,"  said  Mallow. 

"  They  tried  to  stop  it  once,"  said  Manders.  "  They 
kicked  up  unholy  ructions  the  first  time  it  was  produced. 
.  .  .  Blasted  idiots !  The  Irish  people  make  me  sick.  What 
right  have  people  to  interfere  with  a  play?  If  they  don't 
like  it  they  needn't  go  to  it." 

"  It  was  an  insult  to  the  country,"  repeated  Mallow. 

"  And  is  any  one  who  feels  insulted  by  a  play  entitled  to 
kick  up  a  row  and  prevent  others  enjoying  it?  What  would 
you  say  if  the  Unionists  kicked  up  a  row  orer  the  Rising  of 
the  Moon  ?  " 

"  That's  different,"  said  Mallow. 

"  And  we  call  ourselves  an  intelligent  people,"  said  Man- 
ders. "  Look  here,  Lascelles.  Here's  a  situation  for  you. 
The  Nationalist  crowd  considers  a  play  insulting  to  Ire- 
land. So  they  go  down  to  the  Theatre  to  break  up  the 
performance.  The  Trinity  men  hear  of  it  and  go  down  to 
make  a  counter-demonstration  in  favour  of  the  play,  also 


128  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

because  they  consider  it  insulting  to  Ireland.  There's  a 
night  of  cheers,  hisses  and  pandemonium.  And  all  the  time 
the  play  is  no  more  insulting  to  Ireland  than  Hamlet  is  to 
Denmark." 

"  I  think,"  said  Bernard,  "  that  the  Nationalists  were  only 
just  a  shade  less  contemptible  than  the  Trinity  asses." 

"  Lascelles,"  said  Mallow,  "  I'd  jusf  like  to  know  what 
side  you're  on.  I  think  you're  a  bally  trimmer." 

"  You  can  think  what  you  like.  There's  one  thing  I'm 
sure  of  anyway.  I  wouldn't  feel  entitled  to  stop  a  play  just 
because  I  didn't  agree  with  it." 

"  Ah,  you're  a  bally  West  Briton,"  said  Mallow. 

"  People  like  that  fellow  Mallow,"  said  Manders  after- 
wards to  Bernard,  "  are  the  curse  of  this  country.  We  have 
them  on  every  side,  and  they've  an  invariable  trade  mark 
whatever  side  they're  on:  if  you  argue  from  analogy  they 
always  answer  '  That's  different.'  Mallow  and  his  kind 
are  always  ranting  about  Irish  freedom  and  yet  they  won't 
allow  people  to  produce  a  play  they  don't  like.  They  can't 
stand  anything  that  conflicts  with  their  rotten  little  notions 
and  prejudices.  As  for  their  politics  ...  It  makes  me  ill 
to  listen  to  them.  Thank  heaven,  Lascelles,  that  you  and  I 
are  neutral  in  that  quarrel." 


Normality  has  its  claim  on  us  all.  Bernard  had  been 
precocious  as  a  child  and  had  gripped  on  to  ideas  and  abstract 
things  earlier,  and  more  intensely  than  his  contemporaries. 
But  three  months  after  leaving  school  his  interest  in  these 
things  had  begun  to  wane.  He  began  to  read  less  and  then 
to  think  less,  and  at  the  same  time  his  interest  in  games, 
which  had  slackened  during  his  last  years  at  Ashbury,  began 
to  revive.  He  found  pleasure  in  ordinary  students'  society 
and  became  a  little  bored  by  Manders  and  the  intellectuals; 
he  came  to  enjoy  the  coarse  pleasantries  of  the  dissecting- 
room;  even  the  vapid  chatter  of  Merrion  Square  drawing- 
rooms  ceased  to  arouse  his  contempt.  He  went  to  dances 


DUBLIN  129 

and  music  halls;  he  "  knocked  about  "  with  his  fellow  med- 
icals round  town;  and  he  took  girls  he  cared  nothing  about 
to  teas  and  picture  houses.  .  .  .  The  re-action  to  Ashburian 
restraint  and  supervision  may  have  been  partly  responsible 
for  this,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  his  brain  needed  rest.  It 
had  been  worked  and  over-developed  from  his  earliest  child- 
hood and  now  it  clamoured  for  relaxation.  So  he  gave  him- 
self up  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  to  ease  and  enjoyment. 

And  there  was  nothing  to  interrupt  his  repose.  In  those 
days  Ireland  as  far  as  politics  were  concerned  was  a  stagnant 
pool.  The  national  struggle  was  not  at  an  end,  but  it  had 
ceased  to  be  a  struggle.  The  blight  of  Parliamentary  success 
had  settled  on  the  land.  Everything  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
party  politicians  and  the  people  could  attend  to  their  private 
affairs  with  a  clear  conscience,  for  when  everything  was 
being  done  for  them  all  they  had  to  do  was  to  keep  peaceful 
and  grow  prosperous.  So  the  very  right  to  think  on  politics 
was  surrendered.  The  Party  was  presumed  to  be  both  in- 
fallible and  impeccable  and  a  word  of  criticism  was  the  brand 
of  a  traitor;  it  had  ceased  to  be  the  servant  of  the  people 
and  had  taken  to  itself  the  airs  of  a  master  and  Dictator. 

Frequently  one  hears  the  remark  made  with  that  air  of 
profundity  which  characterizes  all  fatuous  pronouncements 
that  there  is  too  much  politics  in  Irish  life;  an  absurd  state- 
ment. Politics  means  the  affairs  of  men,  and  men  cannot 
be  too  careful  of  their  affairs.  It  is  the  neglect  of  their  own 
affairs  by  the  men  of  other  countries  and  the  consequent 
uprise  of  professional  politicians  that  makes  politics  what 
they  are:  the  battle  to  the  dirty  and  the  devil  take  the  clean- 
est. The  reason  for  the  comparative  cleanliness  of  Irish  poli- 
tics is  that  the  people  take,  as  our  superior  thinkers  say,  "  too 
much  interest  "  in  them. 

But  at  this  time  the  people  slumbered  or  grubbed  on  their 
farms  and  the  Party  played  at  politics  in  the  Westminster 
style.  They  assisted  the  Liberal  Government  to  foist  an 
absurd  Insurance  Bill  and  a  ruinous  budget  on  their  unsus- 
pecting country,  and  were  now  engaged  in  supporting  a 


i3o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

measure  to  limit  the  power  of  the  House  of  Lords  in  oppos- 
ing some  future  Home  Rule  Bill.  With  the  national  affairs 
on  so  sound  a  footing  what  had  the  layman  to  do  with 
politics  ? 

Only  in  forgotten  places  and  by  unknown  people  were 
Irish  politics  still  taken  seriously.  In  halls  in  the  city  and 
deserted  quarries  in  the  country  the  physical  force  men  — 
a  few  hundred  in  Dublin,  a  few  thousand  scattered  over  the 
country  —  drilled  quietly  and  armed  themselves  and  waited 
patiently  but  none  too  hopefully  for  the  day  when  their 
countrymen  should  cease  talking  and  do  something.  And, 
struggling  against  abuse  contempt  and  misrepresentation, 
Arthur  Griffith  and  his  handful  of  Sinn  Feiners  strove  to 
teach  Ireland  to  turn  her  back  on  the  useless  and  dishonest 
game  of  English  politics  and  cultivate  herself.  But  the 
politicians  and  the  vast  compact  majority  of  the  people 
ignored  these  disturbers  of  the  peace,  or  when  they  noticed 
them  at  all  called  them,  in  their  superior  way,  cranks  and 
dreamers. 

And  Bernard  and  his  fellows  danced  and  played  billiards. 

3 

The  gas  flared  yellow  in  the  dissecting  room.  The  air 
was  hot  and  heavy  with  mingled  odours;  formalin,  tobacco, 
and  the  faint  but  recognizable  halitus  of  cadavera. 

Bernard,  perched  on  a  high  stool,  was  working  at  the 
superficial  fascia  of  Scarpa's  triangle  under  the  direction  of 
Crowley  who  read  out  the  instructions  from  a  big  anatomy 
resting  against  the  subject's  knee. 

"  Let's  chuck  it,"  said  Crowley  suddenly,  "  we've  done 
enough  for  today." 

Bernard  ceased  working  and  began  to  clean  his  instru- 
ments, turning  round  on  his  stool  at  the  same  time  to  view 
the  crowded  room.  Only  about  half  the  population  was 
working.  The  rest  stood  about,  chatting  and  smoking  or 
reading  the  evening  paper.  The  atmosphere  of  this  chamber 
of  death  was  distinctly  hilarious. 


DUBLIN  131 

The  red-haired  man  at  the  left  upper  limb  told  his  dark- 
haired  partner  a  dirty  story.  The  dark-haired  man  capped  it 
with  another. 

"  Those  are  as  old  as  sin,"  said  Crowley.  "  Did  you  ever 
hear  this  one?  " 

Crowley 's  effort  was  greeted  with  acclamation. 

"  You  first-years  do  talk  unadulterated  filth,"  said  the  man 
at  the  head-and-neck.  "  You'll  be  tired  of  it  by  the  time  you 
get  your  second." 

A  man  from  a  neighbouring  table  strolled  over. 

"  Crowley  got  some  new  ones  ?  "  he  inquired. 

Crowley  obliged  with  another.  His  hearers  roared  with 
laughter,  thereby  attracting  others.  The  man  at  the  head- 
and-neck  threw  down  his  scalpel  in  disgust  and  went  away 
for  a  smoke.  Bernard  felt  a  little  ashamed  of  himself  for 
not  following,  but  then  Crowley  was  his  friend. 

The  dark-haired  man  at  the  upper  limb  recited  a  Limerick. 
Bernard  felt  impelled  to  recite  another,  and  then  Crowley 
dispersed  the  company  with  a  perfectly  outrageous  one. 

"  Come  and  have  a  game  of  billiards,"  he  said  to  Bernard 
after  that. 

They  washed  their  hands  in  a  good  lather  of  Carbolic 
soap  and  went  out  from  the  school  into  the  darkling  streets. 

"  I  feel  like  a  drink  after  that  atmosphere,"  said  Crowley 
as  they  passed  a  public  house. 

Bernard  was  no  tee-totaller,  but  he  had  never  yet  entered 
a  public  house.  It  felt  like  taking  a  new  step  in  life  to  do 
so  now. 

"  Nothing  like  experience,"  he  told  himself  as  they  sat  at 
the  counter  drinking  whiskey  and  soda. 

"Telegraph,  Herrdled  or  Mayul!  "  shrieked  a  newsboy 
through  the  spring  door. 

"  Mail,"  said  Crowley,  producing  a  penny.  He  plunged 
straight  into  the  racing  column.  "  Hurray,"  he  cried, 
"  Salted  Almond  wins." 

"  Got  something  on  him?  " 

"  Drew  him  in  a  sweep  at  the  Arcade  last  night.  .  .  . 


132  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Four  quid  at  least.  .  .  .  Come  along  and  collect  the  dibs. 
We'll  make  a  night  of  it." 

They  went  out  into  the  street,  Bernard  feeling  distinctly 
exhilarated  by  his  drink.  There  was  a  crowd  of  students 
and  others,  McGurk  amongst  them,  in  the  billiard  saloon. 
Crowley  was  greeted  with  a  howl  of  "  lucky  dog!  "  and  the 
stake  holder,  a  sporting-looking  man  smoking  a  cheroot, 
handed  him  over  his  winnings. 

"  Come  on,  boys,  drinks  all  around,"  said  Crowley,  and 
half  a  score  of  them  tumbled  out  to  the  nearest  public  house. 

"What  about  a  good  dinner?"  said  Crowley,  drawing 
Bernard  and  McGurk  aside  from  the  throng. 

"  I'm  on,"  said  Bernard,  draining  his  glass. 

"Where'll  we  go?" 

"  Jammet's,"  suggested  Bernard. 

"  None  o'  your  bloody  swank,"  said  McGurk.  "  Becky's 
for  me." 

"  It's  a  dinner  I'm  inviting  you  to,"  said  Crowley.  "  I 
suggest  the  Green  Bank." 

"  Right  you  are,  old  man,"  said  McGurk  whiskily  genial. 

The;  drinkers  returned  in  a  noisy  crowd  to  the  billiard 
saloon ;  and  Bernard,  Crowley  and  McGurk,  after  a  stroll 
up  and  down  Grafton  Street  "  to  get  an  appetite,"  went  to 
the  Green  Bank  and  ordered  dinner.  They  had  lentil  soup, 
turbot,  roast  mutton,  and  sweet  omelette,  with  a  bottle  of 
sparkling  moselle,  and  they  wound  up  with  coffee,  Benedic- 
tine, and  cigars.  Crowley  and  McGurk  were  fairly  sea- 
soned drinkers,  but  Bernard  in  a  couple  of  hours  had  taken 
three  times  as  much  alcohol  as  he  had  ever  taken  in  a  day 
before,  so  his  head  was  swimming  and  his  speech  loud  and 
incoherent.  Crowley  now  suggesting  a  Picture  House  they 
made  their  way  back  to  Grafton  Street.  Bernard  by  this 
time  was  in  that  state  of  detachment  from  the  world,  that 
condition  of  feeling  almost  as  if  one  were  looking  out  at  life 
from  a  concrete  chamber  through  a  thick  glass  window,  so 
muffled  and  confused  were  the  sounds  and  so  blurred  the 
sights  to  senses  blunted  by  the  beginnings  of  alcoholic  intoxi- 


DUBLIN  133 

cation.  He  seemed  to  walk  by  no  volition  of  his  own  and 
Crowley  almost  supported  him  to  the  crimson  plush  seat  in 
the  picture  house  into  which  he  sank  with  a  sight  of  relief. 
They  had  come  in  in  the  middle  of  a  society  drama  which 
dragged  on  a  seemingly  interminable  course  while  Bernard 
endeavoured  by  sheer  mental  concentration  to  recall  his 
sobriety.  .  .  .  The  drama  flickered  to  its  close,  and  as  the 
lights  went  up  McGurk  drew  Crowley's  attention  to  Ber- 
nard's flushed  face. 

"  Damned  hot  in  here,"  said  Bernard  to  dispel  their 
suspicions. 

An  uproarious  "  comedy  "  followed,  the  principal  situation 
of  which  was  the  loss  by  the  heroine  of  the  principal  part  of 
her  attire  in  a  public  street.  McGurk  howled  with  laughter, 
Crowley  grinned  appreciatively,  but  Bernard  was  still  modest 
enough  to  be  rather  disgusted.  This  was  the  end  of  the 
program,  for  they  had  entered  rather  late,  and  Bernard's 
still  throbbing  head  was  relieved  by  the  cool  air  of  the  street. 

"  Bloody  funny,  that  last  film,"  said  McGurk. 

Crowley  chuckled. 

"  Human  dignity,"  he  said,  "  is  dependent  on  the  nether 
garments.  Stripped  of  everything  else  you  can  still  hold  up 
your  head,  but  what  a  helpless  and  ridiculous  figure  is  a 
man  without  his  trousers  or  a  woman  without  her  skirts." 

McGurk  exploded  with  laughter,  and  even  Bernard  smiled 
reminiscently. 

"  I  say,  boys,"  said  Crowley.  "  The  night's  still  young. 
Let's  go  down  town." 

"  Right  you  are,"  said  McGurk,  and  Bernard,  not  guess- 
ing his  meaning,  and  thinking  that  a  walk  would  sober  him, 
also  agreed. 

They  went  down  D'Olier  Street  and  crossing  the  river  by 
Butt  Bridge  passed  by  Amiens  Street  into  the  disreputable 
labyrinth  of  ways  beyond.  Bernard  wondered  at  his  friends' 
choice,  but  said  nothing.  A  brazen  slatternly  female  hailed 
them  from  a  doorway  but  they  took  no  notice  and  passed  on. 
Gaunt  dark  houses  with  grimy  broken  windows  towered 


134  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

cliff-like  over  the  narrow  street.  Here  and  there  were 
occasional  rifts  in  the  line  where  a  house  had  collapsed  into 
a  heap  of  rubbish.  Through  the  upper  windows  of  a 
crumbling  roofless  framework  the  inscrutable  face  of  the 
moon  could  be  seen.  This  street  was  silent  and  deserted, 
but  in  an  upper  storey  a  child  was  wailing,  and  from  the 
distance  drunken  shouts  could  be  heard.  Their  feet  stum- 
bling against  broken  bricks  and  tin  cans  the  three  young  men 
strode  on.  Turning  a  corner  they  came  upon  a  small  crowd 
gathered  round  a  brightly  lit  window  and  door. 

"  Here  we  are  again  I  "  said  McGurk  cheerfully. 

"You're  not  going  in  there?"  remonstrated  Bernard 
nervously. 

"What  do  you  think?"  said  McGurk. 

"  Non  cuivis  est  adire  Corinthum,"  said  Crowley. 

"  So  this  ...   ?  "  said  Bernard,  and  paused  inquiringly. 

"...  Is,  if  not  a  temple,  at  least  a  shrine  of  the  Cyprian 
goddess,"  said  Crowley  with  perfect  suavity. 

A  boldly  handsome  but  untidy  young  woman  approached 
the  young  men. 

"  Well,  duckies,"  she  said. 

"  The  pass  word,"  said  Crowley.  "  The  mystic  symbol 
of  the  Corybantic  priestesses  of  the  Western  World.  .  .  . 
It's  a  warm  night,"  he  added,  turning  to  the  girl. 

"  Good  night,  boys,  I'm  off,"  said  Bernard  to  his  friends. 

"  Hold  on,  ye  bloody  fool,"  said  McGurk,  starting  after 
him.  He  was  restrained  by  Crowley. 

"  Let  him  alone,"  said  the  latter.  "  He's  still  virgo 
intactus." 

Bernard  sped  away  on  the  wings  of  disgust. 

"  Hould  that  fella  I  "  shrieked  a  voice  from  the  door- 
way. 

Hot  with  shame  he  broke  into  a  trot,  heedless  of  his 
direction.  After  a  few  minutes  he  suddenly  realized  that  he 
was  losing  his  way.  Tired  and  angry  he  prowled  about  the 
ghostly  monotonous  ways  searching  for  a  landmark.  All 
inadvertently  in  the  end  he  struck  upon  Earl  Street,  and 


DUBLIN  135 

within  half  an  hour  he  was  resting  his  throbbing  head  on 
the  cool  softness  of  his  pillow  at  home. 

4 

"Are  you  anyway  friendly  with  Jack  Harvey?"  Lady 
Lascelles  asked  of  her  son  one  day. 

"  No.     I  just  know  him  to  nod  to." 

"That's  a  pity.  His  mother  and  I  are  very  old  friends, 
and  he's  such  a  nice  boy." 

"  That's  exactly  why  he  doesn't  appeal  to  me." 

"  Such  a  thing  to  say." 

"  I  mean  it.     Nice  people  always  bore  me." 

"  Now,  Bernard,  if  you're  going  with  boys  who  are  not 
nice  it's  my  duty  as  your  mother  to  warn  you  that  bad  com- 
panions are  the  ruin  of  many  a  young  man." 

"  I  didn't  mean  what  you  think  at  all.  '  Nice  '  is  a  con- 
fusing word.  It  might  mean  anything.  I'll  make  friends 
with  him  if  you  like." 

"  Do.     I'm  sure  you'll  like  him." 

"  I'm  quite  sure  I  won't,"  thought  Bernard. 

Jack  Harvey  was  a  mother's  son.  His  father  had  died 
when  he  was  quite  a  child  and  his  whole  upbringing  had 
been  in  the  hands  of  his  mother.  Mrs.  Harvey  .was  a  very 
positive  and  aggressive  personality  who  left  her  mark  upon 
all  with  whom  she  associated.  Consequently  Jack  grew 
up  as  a  very  ladylike  young  man.  Though  manly  at  bot- 
tom all  his  actions  were  feminine.  His  walk  was  mincing; 
his  smile  was  a  simper;  his  voice  was  gentle.  He  could  not 
smoke  a  pipe  and  he  smoked  cigarettes  in  a  ladylike  manner. 
All  his  ideas  and  methods  of  thought  bore  the  impress  of  the 
female  hand  that  had  implanted  them. 

He  received  Bernard's  friendly  advances  with  a  lambent 
smile  and  said  he  hoped  they  would  soon  be  great  chums 
(a  word  Bernard  never  heard  without  a  shudder  running 
down  his  spine). 

"  Our  mothers  have  always  been  great  old  cronies,  you 
know,"  he  added. 


1 36  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Drop  in  to  see  us  some  Tuesday  evening,"  he  said  at  a 
later  stage  of  their  acquaintance.  "  We're  always  at  home 
then  and  we  generally  have  a  few  friends  in.  Music  and 
that  sort  of  thing,  you  know.  Hymn  books  supplied." 
(This  last  was  his  idea  of  a  joke.) 

The  following  Tuesday,  having  nothing  else  to  do,  Ber- 
nard decided  to  "  drop  in  "  as  invited,  but  he  brought  his 
mother  with  him  for  protection. 

Mrs.  Harvey  had  fallen  on  evil  days  since  we  last  saw  her 
disseminating  scandal  in  Merrion  Square.  Her  husband, 
the  fashionable  oculist,  had  died  within  a  year  of  that  inci- 
dent, leaving  her,  with  her  son  and  three  daughters,  almost 
penniless.  Many  women  would  have  succumbed  to  such  a 
strain,  but  Mrs.  Harvey  was  cast  in  heroic  mould.  She 
moved  as  much  of  her  furniture  and  silver  as  she  was  not 
compelled  to  sell  into  a  little  house  on  the  North  Circular 
Road  and  kept  hens  and  lodgers  the  while  she  gave  her 
children  as  good  an  education  as  possible  and  kept  up  as 
much  of  her  pristine  state  as  her  straitened  fortunes  would 
allow.  She  kept  her  Tuesday  at  home  just  as  in  former 
days  and  with  jest  and  scandal  entertained  those  of  her  old 
friends  who  remained  true  to  her.  She  had  but  one  servant, 
but  her  she  trained  to  the  duties  of  cook,  parlourmaid,  poul- 
try keeper  and  lady's  maid,  and  though  she  mercilessly  over- 
worked and  underpaid  her  yet  managed  to  convey  to  the 
girl  the  conviction  that  she  was  her  benefactress  and  to  win 
and  keep  her  respect  and  affection.  Through  trouble  and 
poverty  she  smiled  and  flounced  her  way.  There  was  some- 
thing almost  of  nobility  in  this  tenacious  narrowminded  old 
snob. 

Bernard  and  his  mother  were  admitted  by  the  maid  of  all 
work,  starched  and  self-conscious  for  the  occasion.  Bernard 
hung  up  his  hat  and  coat  in  the  miniature  hall,  and  then 
the  maid  opened  the  drawing-room  door,  ceremoniously  an- 
nouncing: 

"  Lady  Lascelles.     Mr.  Bernard  Lascelles." 

Mrs.    Harvey  was   deliciously   surprised   to   see   her  old 


DUBLIN  137 

friend.  (It  would  not  do  to  admit  that  she  had  seen  her 
through  the  window  mounting  the  steps.)  She  kissed  Lady 
Lascelles  rapturously  for  the  benefit  of  a  couple  of  humble 
North  Circular  Road  acquaintances  who  were  present,  and 
shook  hands  heartily  with  Bernard.  Jack  then  came  for- 
ward and  introduced  Bernard  to  his  sisters  while  their 
mothers  sat  down  to  chat  over  old  times.  The  eldest  girl, 
Susan,  was  tall,  plain  and  pimply,  and  having  said  "  how  do 
you  do  "  remained  silent.  Molly,  the  second  girl,  was  of 
medium  height,  almost  pretty,  and  plunged  into  conversation 
at  once,  so  that  Bernard's  introduction  to  the  youngest  sister 
Mabel,  a  shy  fair  haired  girl  of  sixteen,  was  of  a  perfunctory 
nature.  Molly  was  a  jolly  girl  whose  conversation  con- 
sisted almost  entirely  of  a  string  of  funny  stories.  Bernard 
found  them  amusing  at  first  but  was  beginning  to  feel  bore- 
dom approaching  when  Mrs.  Harvey  commanded  Molly  to 
sing.  Molly,  nothing  loath,  obeyed  at  once  and  sang  in  the 
conventional  humorous  way  Are  you  right  there,  Michael? 
and  on  being  encored,  an  English  music  hall  comic  ditty. 
While  the  songs  were  in  progress  Mabel  slipped  into  the 
chair  beside  Bernard  vacated  by  her  sister,  and  as  the  ap- 
plause died  away  turned  to  talk  to  him.  She  was  a  pretty 
child,  with  deep  brown  eyes  and  golden  hair  tied  back  by  a 
big  blue  bow  at  her  neck.  At  the  first  word  she  uttered 
she  suddenly  became  shy  and  faltered  while  her  cheeks  be- 
came flooded  with  pink  blushes.  Bernard  tactfully  took  up 
a  commonplace  topic. 

"  Your  sister  sings  very  well,"  he  said. 

"Do  you  think  so?"  said  Mabel,  still  a  little  timid. 
Then  abruptly  her  shyness  seemed  to  slip  away  from  her. 
"  But  you  don't  think  so,"  she  went  on.  "  You  only  said 
that  to  be  polite." 

"  Well,  perhaps  I  did,"  Bernard  admitted. 

"  We've  none  of  us  got  any  talents  really,"  said  Mabel, 
"  but  mother  makes  us  perform  whether  we  like  it  or  not. 
She'll  probably  call  on  me  in  a  minute,  and  I  daren't  refuse. 
Susan's  the  bravest  of  us.  She  used  to  have  to  play  the 


i38  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

piano  but  last  year  she  struck  and  that's  finished,  thank 
goodness." 

"  Mabel,  won't  you  sing  something  now,"  came  Mrs. 
Harvey's  voice  across  the  room. 

Mabel  made  a  little  face  at  Bernard  and  went  to  the 
piano.  She  sang  Robin  Adatr  with  deep  expression  and  a 
thin  voice,  and  gave  Beauttful  Garden  of  Roses  as  an  encore. 
After  that  a  visitor  played  Dvorak's  Humoreske  jerkily  on 
the  violin,  and  then  Jack  Harvey,  in  a  fine  bass  voice  that 
contrasted  strangely  with  his  general  manner,  sang  My  Old 
Shako,  and  Just  before  the  Battle,  Mother,  which  last 
brought  tears  to  Mrs.  Harvey's  eyes  and  necessitated  the  call- 
ing in  of  Mary  Ann  and  her  dispatch  to  the  upper  regions 
for  a  fresh  pocket-handkerchief. 

Then  tea  was  served  and  Lady  Lascelles  came  over  to 
Molly  and  said: 

"  Many  happy  returns.  I've  just  heard  it's  your  birth- 
day," and  a  golden  present  found  its  way  into  Molly's  hand. 

Meanwhile  Bernard  was  buttonholed  by  Mrs.  Harvey  and 
compelled  to  sit  beside  her  and  listen  to  a  genteel  account  of 
herself  ,and  her  family.  He  learned  that  his  mother  and 
Mrs.  Harvey  had  been  O  such  friends  at  school  and  that 
both  ladies  hoped  their  sons  would  be  the  same.  Jack  was 
such  a  good  boy.  So  kind  to  his  mother  and  sisters. 

"  Be  kind  to  your  mother  always,  Bernard,"  Mrs.  Harvey 
admonished  him.  "  If  you  knew  what  your  mother  had  to 
suffer  to  bring  you  into  the  world  you'd  think  no  sacrifice 
too  great  to  please  her." 

Bernard,  as  a  medical  student,  thought  he  knew  as  much 
on  this  subject  as  Mrs.  Harvey,  but  made  no  comment. 

"  The  girls  are  so  good  to  me  too,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey. 
"  They're  all  in  good  positions  —  except  Mabel  of  course  — 
and  they  give  me  every  penny  they  earn."  (She  omitted  to 
mention  that  they  did  so  by  duress.)  "  Susan  has  just  ob- 
tained a  new  position  as  lady  companion  to  Lady  Donegal." 
(Susan  was  governess  to  that  Lady's  children.)  "And 
Molly  has  a  Government  appointment."  (She  was  a  typist 


DUBLIN  139 

in  the  Custom  House.)  "  Do  you  know  Lady  Donegal, 
Bernard?  I  suppose  not.  She's  a  relative  of  ours." 

So  Mrs.  Harvey  rambled  on  serenely  and  graciously, 
cloaking  her  shabbiness  and  striving  to  impress,  while  Ber- 
nard listened  with  the  ill-concealed  contempt  of  youth. 

Bernard  breathed  a  sigh  of  relief  as  he  and  his  mother 
stepped  into  the  open  air,  very  refreshing  after  the  close  little 
sitting-room  of  the  Harveys. 

"  It's  awfully  funny,"  said  Lady  Lascelles  as  they  drove 
home.  "  But  whenever  I  call  on  Mrs.  Harvey  it's  the  birth- 
day of  one  or  another  of  the  family.  It's  a  curious  co- 
incidence, isn't  it?  " 

"  Very  curious,"  said  Bernard.  ;    j 

5 

It  was  not  long  before  Bernard  took  to  falling  in  love  with 
that  fervour  and  inconstancy  characteristic  of  adolescence. 
For  a  month  or  more  he  was  faithful  to  the  memory  of 
Maud,  thinking  of  her  frequently  and  dreaming  of  her 
sometimes,  but  finally  she  glided  into  the  gallery  of  things 
half  forgotten.  And  then  he  met  Muriel. 

He  saw  her  first  at  a  meeting  of  a  college  society  and  was 
enraptured  by  her  profile.  He  lay  awake  half  that  night 
thinking  of  her,  ate  no  breakfast,  and  haunted  the  college  all 
next  morning  to  get  a  glimpse  of  her.  By  some  artifice  or 
other  he  managed  to  secure  an  introduction  a  few  days  after, 
and  the  clasp  of  the  neat-gloved  hand  she  gave  him  completed 
his  surrender.  He  wooed  her  timidly  for  a  time,  and  she 
encouraged  him  to  be  bolder.  At  last,  greatly  daring,  he 
invited  her  to  tea  and  pictures,  and  she  accepted  graciously, 
almost  eagerly  he  fancied.  At  a  dance  a  week  later  he  met 
her  again,  and  she  gave  him  ten  dances,  of  which  they  sat 
out  six.  Of  course  Bernard  went  through  all  the  emotions 
of  first  love.  His  feeling  for  Maud,  he  told  himself,  had 
been  a  mere  piece  of  boyish  sentimentality.  This  was  dif- 
ferent. Muriel  troubled  the  very  depths  of  his  soul.  His 
love  for  her  was  compounded  of  almost  equal  parts  of  pas- 


140  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

sion  and  worship.  Her  image  disturbed  his  sleep  and 
truncated  his  meals.  If  he  met  her  suddenly  he  trembled, 
his  heart  seemed  to  stop  beating,  and  all  the  blood  in  his 
body  rushed  to  the  surface.  When  he  talked  to  her  his 
knees  shook  and  his  veins  pulsated  at  his  temples.  She  was 
the  only  girl  in  the  world,  he  told  himself,  and  marriage 
with  her  would  be  an  eternity  of  bliss.  So  for  many  weeks 
he  led  a  highly  emotional  existence.  Yet  it  was  only  calf- 
love after  all,  short  and  fluttering.  A  tea  or  two,  a  walk 
or  two,  a  dance  or  two,  a  kiss  or  two,  and  it  was  over. 

Now  Bernard  felt  tremendously  experienced.  He  knew 
woman.  He  had  sounded  her  depths.  He  had  tasted  pas- 
sion. He  thought  he  had  got  to  the  end  of  these  things 
and  found  them  insipid,  and  he  posed  (to  himself)  as  a 
slightly  melancholy  cynic.  Tired  of  True  Love  he  tried  a 
flirtation.  The  girl  he  chose  was  an  accomplished  flirt ;  they 
enjoyed  each  other's  company  for  a  while;  and  all  ended 
happily  when  they  grew  tired  of  each  other  and  parted. 

Not  long  after  this  he  was  at  a  dance.  He  was  standing 
rather  glumly  in  a  corner  fiddling  with  his  program  which 
was  full  of  names  of  newly  introduced  partners  —  quite 
uninteresting  people,  when  he  became  conscious  that  some 
one  was  looking  at  him.  He  glanced  round  and  saw  a  tall 
dark  girl  with  red  flowers  in  her  hair  gazing  at  him  intently. 
He  was  not  surprised,  for  he  was  quite  aware  of  his  own 
good  looks,  but  he  blushed,  and,  the  music  of  the  first  dance 
striking  up  at  that  moment,  he  went  to  find  his  partner. 
He  was  conscious  of  the  dark  girl's  observation  all  through 
the  dance,  and  then,  as  if  under  a  spell  she  had  cast,  began  to 
take  notice  of  her.  Then  he  perceived  with  a  surprising 
pang  of  disappointment  that  she  had  ceased  to  look  round  for 
him.  For  a  time  he  was  miserable.  Then,  later  on,  he 
caught  her  glancing  in  his  direction  once  more.  It  was  dur- 
ing an  interval  and  her  partner  had  left  her.  She  stood 
beneath  a  palm,  leaning  alluringly  against  the  wall.  Stam- 
mering some  excuse  to  his  partner  he  plucked  up  all  his 
courage  and  accosted  her.  They  left  their  respective  part- 


DUBLIN  141 

ners  in  the  lurch  and  danced  the  next  dance  together,  and 
when  it  was  over  they  sought  a  retired  spot  to  converse  in. 
They  talked  freely  and  naturally  together  as  if  they  had 
known  each  other  for  a  long  time,  and  the  interval,  usually 
a  long-drawn-out  tedium  of  ball  room  commonplaces,  flashed 
by.  Both  made  involuntary  exclamations  of  disappointment 
when  the  music  recommenced. 

"  Need  we?  "  said  Bernard. 

Her  eyes  answered  him.  They  tore  up  their  programs 
and  the  rest  of  the  evening  was  undiluted  joy. 

Bernard  had  cooled  off  considerably  by  the  morning,  and, 
when  in  the  afternoon  he  met  her  in  Stephen's  Green  stripped 
of  the  ball  room's  glamour,  his  ardour  almost  vanished.  But 
there  was  no  backwardness  about  Rose.  She  made  no  pre- 
tence to  hide  the  attraction  she  felt  towards  him,  and  this 
acted  upon  Bernard  in  two  opposite  ways.  Partly  the  flat- 
tery of  it  attracted  him:  partly  the  fear  of  it  repelled  him. 
Altogether  he  was  in  a  mixed  state  of  mind.  He  wanted  to 
be  loved,  but  this  love  seemed  too  easily  won.  In  this  un- 
stable condition  of  mind  a  sudden  appreciation  of  the  beauty 
of  her  hair  turned  the  scale.  So  began  a  curious  affair  in 
which  Bernard  perpetually  vacillated  between  love  and  hate 
until  the  day  when  a  particularly  affectionate  demonstration 
frightened  him  away  for  ever.  .  .  . 

For  a  fleeting  instant,  perplexing  memories  of  Janet 
Morecambe  recurred  to  him,  only  to  pass  rapidly  away  .  .  . 

Facial  beauty  had  been  the  main  attraction  for  Bernard 
up  to  this,  but  now  he  was  to  discover  new  symptoms  in 
himself.  In  August  he  went  with  the  family  on  its  annual 
trip  to  the  seaside.  At  the  bathing-place  one  day  he  casually 
noticed  a  girl  making  her  way  down  the  strand  to  the  water. 
He  recognized  her  at  once.  She  was  a  Miss  Heuston  Har- 
rington who  was  staying  with  her  mother  at  the  same  hotel 
as  the  Lascelles  family.  Their  respective  mothers  were  dis- 
tantly acquainted,  but  Bernard  had  never  met  the  daughter, 
the  plainness  of  whose  features  had  deterred  him  from  going 
out  of  his  way  to  seek  an  introduction.  But  now  something 


i42  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

in  the  way  she  balanced  herself  as  her  bare  feet  trod  the 
shingle,  something  of  sinuous  grace  in  her  figure,  clad  only 
in  a  simple  bathing  costume,  caught  his  attention  and  he  had 
his  first  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of  the  female  form.  Rose 
had  been  rather  angular,  Muriel  slightly  dumpy,  yet  he  had 
not  noticed  it.  Now  Dora  was  a  revelation.  He  found 
himself  thinking  of  her  graceful  shape  on  the  way  home  to 
lunch,  and  that  afternoon  as  she  sat  on  a  bench  in  the  hotel 
garden  (they  wore  tight  skirts  in  those  days  with  a  slit 
from  hem  to  knee)  he  discovered  new  beauty  in  a  well 
formed  calf  and  ankle.  He  determined  to  get  to  know  her 
by  means  of  Alice. 

Alice  was  much  amused  when  Bernard  ingenuously  re- 
quested her  to  make  friends  with  Miss  Heuston  Harrington. 

"  Why,  you  silly  boy,"  she  exclaimed,  "  she's  not  even 
pretty." 

"  Love  doesn't  depend  on  beauty,"  said  Bernard  senten- 
tiously.  (And  all  the  time  the  hypocrite  was  dreaming  of 
the  afternoon's  vision.) 

"  Love !"  laughed  Alice.  "  This  is  quick  work.  Never 
mind.  I'll  get  her  for  you." 

And  she  did. 

The  introduction  produced  a  recrudescence  of  the  symp- 
toms Muriel  had  evoked  in  former  days.  Next  day  they 
met  by  appointment  on  the  golf  links.  A  foursome  was 
arranged  with  Alice  and  Eugene ;  and  Bernard  noticed  with 
joy  that  she  showed  signs  of  satisfaction  when  it  was  decided 
that  she  should  be  his  partner.  His  manoeuvres  to  secure 
her  in  subsequent  matches  were  pathetically  ingenious  and 
transparently  fraudulent,  for  Bernard  was  so  much  better  a 
player  than  Eugene,  and  Dora  was  so  much  better  than  Alice, 
that  the  partnership  between  Bernard  and  his  heart's  desire 
was  manifestly  unfair.  When  his  diplomacy  failed  poor 
Alice  had  to  put  up  with  a  silent  furious  partner  jealously 
glaring  across  the  links  to  where  Eugene  seemed  to  be  having 
extraordinarily  intimate  talks  with  the  fair  one.  His  golf 
too  seemed  to  go  to  pieces  on  these  occasions,  so  that  Alice 


DUBLIN  143 

and  he  were  usually  beaten  ten  up  and  eight  to  play,  when  he 
went  through  feverish  manoeuvres  to  prevent  the  playing  of 
the  bye. 

He  never  succeeded  in  making  love  to  Dora.  She  seldom 
permitted  him  to  be  alone  with  her,  but  sometimes  they 
conversed  together  in  the  garden  in  full  view  of  the  residents 
of  the  hotel.  They  talked  about  art  and  books  and  theatres 
and  intellectual  things  generally,  coldly  and  impersonally, 
and  all  the  time  Bernard  was  wishing  he  was  rambling  the 
country  with  her  and  helping  her  over  streams  and  stiles. 

And  August  came  to  an  end. 


During  his  second  and  third  years  in  University  College 
Bernard  entered  upon  a  new  phase  in  his  development. 
His  appetite  for  light  pleasures  was  already  less  keen  and 
intellectual  interests  revived.  The  transition  was  slow 
however;  the  enthusiasm  which  had  filled  him  in  earlier 
days  did  not  return,  and  a  cold  detached  interest  for  a  long 
time  took  its  place.  The  college  was  a  vast  incoherence  of 
half-expressed  but  stimulating  thought;  mental  energy  was 
in  the  atmosphere;  and  if  the  professors  and  lecturers  were 
pedagogic  and  uninspiring  the  students  were  themselves  a 
university.  In  the  draughty  and  uncomfortable  common- 
rooms,  round  the  fireplace  in  the  porter's  lodge,  on  the  front 
steps  of  the  College  and  of  the  National  Library  they  talked 
in  groups.  Everything  in  heaven  and  earth  came  up  for 
discussion:  religion,  politics,  economics,  philosophy,  love, 
art,  interspersed  with  horse-racing,  cards,  tobacco,  athletics 
and  dirty  stories.  And  the  debating  societies  were  so  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  Ashbury.  Here  there  was  no  class  creed 
to  drop  its  fatuous  yet  incontrovertible  dogmata  like  heavy 
weights  upon  the  fine  points  of  argument.  There  was  no 
foreordained  verdict  upon  any  subject  of  discussion  however 
revolutionary.  Even  theology  was  not  secure  from  the  in- 
vestigations of  these  sons  of  the  Church.  Yet  on  the  subject 
of  Ireland  Bernard  still  found  accurate  information  unob- 


i44  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

tainable.  The  fiery  optimism  of  Murray,  the  impatient 
logic  of  O'Dwyer,  the  gloomy  pessimism  of  Moore  had  rent 
but  small  gaps  in  the  veils  of  his  ignorance,  and  now  in  Uni- 
versity College  the  very  fact  that  Nationalism  was  taken  for 
granted  and  all  Irish  questions  approached  on  that  basis  was 
a  further  bar  to  his  advancement.  His  fellows  put  him 
down  as  a  West  Briton  and  left  him  at  that. 

One  day  at  the  beginning  of  the  October  term  Bernard 
encountered  Felim  O'Dwyer  in  the  hall  of  the  medical 
school. 

"  Hello!  "  he  said.     "  You  taking  up  medicine?  " 

"  Looks  like  it,  doesn't  it  ?  "  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Coming  up 
Graf  ton  Street  ?  " 

Bernard  said  he  was  and  they  set  out  together  by  Crow 
Street,  Dame  Street,  and  Trinity  Street. 

"  Yes.  I'm  starting  medicine,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  and  I 
wish  to  the  devil  I  wasn't." 

"  Then  why  do  it  ?  " 

"  I've  a  Roman  father,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  with  whom 
there's  no  disputing." 

"  Fathers  are  a  curse,"  exclaimed  Bernard.  "  They  seem 
to  think  their  sons  are  their  property." 

"  Yes.  When  they're  young.  And  sort  of  old  age  pen- 
sions later  on.  I  hate  my  father." 

"  That's  natural  instinct  in  the  young  male,"  said  Bernard. 
"  I  don't  care  much  for  mine." 

"  This  stunt  of  making  every  available  man  a  doctor  is 
going  to  be  the  ruin  of  this  unfortunate  country,"  went  on 
O'Dwyer.  "  It's  rotten  economics.  We  can't  live  by  cur- 
ing one  another's  diseases.  In  Ireland  every  farmer  and 
business  man  puts  one  son  into  the  Church,  another  into 
medicine  and  hands  the  farm  or  the  business  over  to  the 
third  —  usually  the  fool  of  the  family.  Then  the  people 
who  are  already  doctors  won't  let  their  sons  sink  any  lower 
and  make  doctors  or  lawyers  of  them  all.  Result  —  an 
Irish  doctor  on  every  ship  that  sails  the  sea  and  in  every 


DUBLIN  145 

town  in  England,  while  Ireland  goes  steadily  downhill  for 
lack  of  brains  and  business  ability." 

"  I  thought,"  said  Bernard  with  a  smile,  "  that  it  was 
British  government  was  Ireland's  ruin." 

"  So  it  is.  It's  British  government  that  creates  the  con- 
ditions that  lead  to  this." 

"  You're  a  monomaniac,  O'Dwyer,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Maybe  so.  But  even  a  monomaniac  may  speak  the 
truth." 

In  Grafton  Street  Bernard  was  surprised  to  see  Fergus 
Moore,  whom  he  had  not  met  since  their  visit  to  Willoughby 
Towers,  coming  towards  them.  He  stopped  Moore  and 
introduced  him  to  O'Dwyer.  The  three  immediately  ad- 
journed to  the  nearest  tea-shop,  where  Bernard  asked  Moore 
what  he  intended  doing  in  Dublin. 

"  I've  finished  with  Oxford,"  said  Moore,  and  I'm  going 
to  take  a  post  graduate  course  in  Philosophy  in  the  Na- 
tional." 

"  Good.  We're  Nationals  too  .  .  .  Medicals  .  .  .  And 
by  the  way,  what's  your  present  philosophy  of  life?  " 

"  Much  the  same  as  ever.  In  theory  I'm  a  revolutionary 
but  in  practice  I'm  a  hedonist." 

"And  what  form  does  your  hedonism  take?" 

"  Free  Love,"  said  Moore. 

"  Good  Lord !  "  said  Bernard  and  O'Dwyer  in  one  breath. 

"  Don't  be  startled.  I  don't  mean  promiscuity.  I  said 
Free  Love." 

"Where's  the  difference?" 

"  All  the  difference  in  the  world,  my  dear  boy.  Free 
Love  is  based  on  the  doctrine  that  cohabitation  without  love 
is  immoral.  In  other  words  that  most  marriages  auto- 
matically become  immoral  after  a  few  years.  Free  Lovers 
cohabit  as  long  as  love  lasts  and  not  a  minute  longer." 

"  If  I  wasn't  an  orthodox  Catholic,"  said  Bernard,  "  I 
might  be  disposed  to  favour  that  doctrine.  It's  most  attrac- 
tive. But  what  of  the  children?  " 


146  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  I  hadn't  considered  that  aspect  yet,"  said  Moore.  "  It's 
certainly  a  difficulty.  That  is,"  he  added,  "  under  present 
economic  conditions." 

"  Present  economic  conditions,"  said  Bernard,  "  are  re- 
sponsible for  the  whole  of  the  modern  sex  problem. 
Physiologically  we  ought  to  marry  at  twenty.  Economically 
we  can't  manage  it  till  thirty.  Is  ten  years  of  voluntary  sup- 
pression of  a  physiological  function  that's  as  natural  as 
eating  and  sleeping  good  for  a  man?  Is  it  even  possible? 
Half  the  fellows  I've  met  I  know  to  be  unchaste  (pro- 
miscuously too)  and  the  other  half  I  don't  know  about. 
Well,  suppression  is  an  evil ;  prostitution  an  abomination. 
Early  marriage  is  impossible  owing  to  the  present  economic 
system.  Therefore  the  present  economic  system  must  be 
abolished." 

"Very  well,"  said  Moore,  "and  what  happens  then? 
Hasty  marriages  of  young  people  who  fancy  they're  in  love 
ending  in  lives  of  unhappiness  or  conjugal  infidelity.  Those 
conditions  would  be  as  bad  as  the  present,  if  not  worse." 

"  The  majority  of  healthy  minded  people  will  always  be 
content  with  monogamy.  You  can't  legislate  for  exceptions. 
Besides,  even  an  increase  in  conjugal  infidelity  is  better  than 
prostitution.  I've  really  only  one  fixed  belief  in  this  matter, 
and  that  is  that  the  purpose  of  sex  is  to  produce  children, 
therefore  man's  personal  comfort  must  come  secondary  to 
the  welfare  of  the  children.  Children  require  family  life. 
Therefore,  to  hell  with  Free  Love." 

"  Family  life,"  said  Moore,  "  is  all  very  well  for  creature 
comforts,  but  it's  ruinous  to  the  mind." 

"  Ruin  the  mind  in  youth  and  it'll  recover.  Ruin  the 
body  and  it  won't.  Look  at  me.  I  was  brought  up  to  be  a 
Tory  Imperialist  and  Capitalist,  and  you  see  before  you  a 
Cosmopolitan  Socialist." 

"  Here's  to  family  life!  "  said  O'Dwyer,  finishing  his  tea. 

"  There  was  a  young  fellow  called  Lascel 
Deserted  the  fold  of  the  Castle, 
While  Fergus  O'Moore 


DUBLIN  147 

Succumbed  to  the  lure 
Of  Omar,  wine,  women,  and  wassail. 

"Why  don't  you  clap?"  he  asked.  "That  was  ex- 
tempore." 

"  I  hate  the  way  you  twist  my  name  to  suit  your  beastly 
verses,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Poetic  licence,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

"  Licence  verging  on  obsession,"  retorted  Bernard. 

A  cadaverous  individual  in  the  distance  at  this  moment 
waved  a  salutation  to  Moore  who  beckoned  him  over  to  their 
table.  Moore  introduced  him  to  his  friends  as  Austin 
Mallow. 

"  Had  you  a  brother,  called  Brian,  at  Ashbury?  "  asked 
Bernard. 

"Yes.     Did  you  know  him?" 

"  Slightly." 

Austin  Mallow  was  a  contrast  to  his  burly  brother.  He 
was  very  lean  and  his  shoulders  stooped.  There  was  a 
strange  unnatural  brightness  in  his  sunken  brown  eyes. 

"  Mr.  Mallow  and  Mr.  O'Dwyer,"  said  Moore,  "  you  are 
each  meeting  a  fellow-poet." 

The  poets  bowed  to  each  other. 

"  If  you  can  call  O'Dwyer  a  poet  at  all,"  interjected 
Bernard. 

O'Dwyer  cast  a  look  of  scorn  at  Bernard. 

"  Pooh !  You've  no  sense  of  humour,"  he  said,  "  or 
criticism  either.  You  always  resent  the  impertinence  of  my 
verses,  while  you  ought  to  be  admiring  the  mind  of  the  person 
who  made  them." 

"  How  old  are  you,  O'Dwyer?  "  said  Bernard. 

"  Eighteen." 

"If  you're  not  careful  you'll  develop  the  artistic  tempera- 
ment." 

"  Artistic  temperament  me  neck !  I  can  express  all  I 
think." 

"  A  grave  deficiency,"  said  Austin. 


i48  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Not' if  you  think  the  things  I  think." 

"  Personally,"  said  Austin,  "  I  think  a  lot  more  than  I 
can  express." 

"That  doesn't  prove  that  your  thoughts  are  anything 
wonderful.  It  merely  means  that  your  powers  of  expression 
are  deficient." 

"  Nothing  of  the  sort,"  said  Austin  dogmatically. 
"  There  are  thoughts  that  cannot  possibly  be  put  into 
words.  Words  are  finite  and  thoughts  infinite." 

"  If  I  ever  thought  anything  I  couldn't  express  I'd  be 
afraid,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

"Of  what?" 

"  Lunacy." 

"  To  the  common  mind  inspiration  is  often  mistaken  for 
lunacy." 

"  Yes.  And  I've  heard  of  lunacy  being  mistaken  for  in- 
spiration." 

"  I  don't  see  the  point  of  that  remark,"  said  Austin,  calm 
but  furious. 

"  Well,  have  some  tea,"  said  Moore,  and  so  diverted  the 
conversation  to  safer  courses. 

When  Austin  after  a  hurried  tea  excused  himself  and 
went  away,  O'Dwyer  asked: 

"  Has  that  fellow  a  slate  loose?  " 

"  I  often  think  so,"  said  Moore.  "  He's  one  of  these 
mystics.  And  in  politics  he's  a  martyromaniac." 

"What's  that?" 

"  Thinks  that  the  only  way  to  redeem  Ireland  from  her 
present  slough  of  respectability  is  to  get  a  half  dozen  heroes 
to  attack  the  Castle  with  their  naked  fists  and  get  hanged. 
Robert  Emmet  stunt,  you  know.  '  One  man  must  die  for 
the  people.'  " 

"  What  infernal  rubbish,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Not  so  hasty!  "  said  O'Dwyer.  "  It's  not  my  line,  but 
there's  something  to  be  said  for  it  all  the  same." 

"  Well,"  said  Moore,  "  I  must  say  I  see  very  little  sense 
in  dying  for  this  tuppenny  hapenny  country.  Her  case  is 


DUBLIN  149 

hopeless.  She's  never  made  an  effort  that  didn't  fail,  mainly 
owing  to  her  own  stupidity.  Her  finest  men  have  wasted 
themselves  in  useless  endeavour,  and  today  after  seven  cen- 
turies of  bondage,  she's  as  far  from  freedom  as  ever.  The 
fact  is,  the  country's  in  a  vicious  circle  of  hopelessness. 
She  can't  be  free  till  she's  educated,  and  she  can't  be  educated 
till  she's  free." 

"  I've  eliminated  the  word  '  can't '  from  my  vocabulary," 
said  O'Dwyer.  "  All  things  are  possible." 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  Moore  resignedly,  "  I  waver  perpetually 
between  two  verses  of  Omar :  the  one  about : 

i'-l.  ',  '.;«,:  -     t 

But  leave  the  wise  to  wrangle,  and  with  me 
The  quarrel  of  the  universe  let  be; 

etcetera,  and  the  one  that  ends: 

#95&fj 

Would  we  not  shatter  it  to  bits  and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire. 

Have  a  cigarette?  " 

A  few  days  after  this  Bernard  came  upon  Crowley  hold- 
ing forth  in  his  half-serious,  half-flippant  way  to  O'Dwyer, 
Manders  and  another  man  called  Lynch  on  the  steps  of  the 
college. 

"  The  Union,"  said  Crowley,  "  made  Ireland  John  Bull's 
unwilling  and  downtrodden  wife.  Home  Rule  will  merely 
make  her  his  fractious  concubine.  Sanity  and  decency  re- 
quire that  Cathleen  should  seek  a  divorce." 

"  Metaphors  don't  mean  anything,"  said  Lynch.  "  Home 
Rule,  whatever  you  say,  is  common  sense  and  practical 
politics." 

"  Not  this  footling  clumsy  makeshift  of  a  Home  Rule  bill 
anyway,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  What  on  earth  made  the  Party 
accept  such  thrash  ?  " 

"  I  think  it's  a  damn  good  bill,"  said  Lynch. 

"  Have  you  read  it?  " 

"  Well  —  in  a  summary." 


i5o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Well  go  and  read  the  damn  thing  through  before  you 
have  the  assurance  to  support  it.  I'll  bet  ninety-nine  people 
out  of  a  hundred  who've  accepted  the  bill  with  shrieks  of 
joy  haven't  taken  the  trouble  to  read  it." 

"  Would  you  have  the  whole  country  read  the  bill  right 
through  ?  " 

"Of  course.  What  the  hell  else  would  they  do?  Isn't 
it  to  decide  their  whole  future?  " 

"  What  John  Redmond  takes  is  good  enough  for  me. 
You  separatists  are  such  unpractical  dreamers." 

"What  cliche!  What  self-satisfied  humbug!  Unprac- 
tical indeed !  Surely  it's  more  practical  to  trust  to  your  own 
right  arm,  however  weak  it  may  be,  than  to  the  pledges  of 
English  politicians?  The  kind  of  dreamer  who  does  that 
gets  let  down  every  time." 

Here  Crowley  grinned. 

"  Like  the  man  who  trusts  to  the  buttons  on  ready-made 
trousers,"  he  suggested. 

"  But  look  here,"  interposed  Manders,  "  this  theorizing's 
all  very  well,  but  how  does  it  work  out  in  practice?  An 
odd  fizzle  of  rebellion,  and  then  an  era  of  strong  government. 
Constitutionalism  has  got  us  some  very  tangible  advantages." 

"  Perhaps.  But  Nationally  it  leaves  us  at  a  standstill," 
said  O'Dwyer. 

"Oh,  Nationality!  Nationality!"  said  Manders  impa- 
tiently. "  I  hate  the  very  sound  of  the  word.  What  does 
it  mean  anyway  ?  " 

"  Now,  look  here,"  said  Crowley  suddenly,  "  I  know 
you're  relying  on  our  making  some  sort  of  sentimental  reply 
to  that.  But  we'll  disappoint  you.  Independence  means 
that  we  won't  have  to  spill  our  blood  or  spend  our  money 
in  England's  wars.  Isn't  that  a  practical  enough  argument 
for  any  one  .  .  .  especially  for  a  pacifist  like  you  ?  " 

"  My  dear  Crowley,"  said  Manders  suavely,  "  small  na- 
tions are  things  of  the  past.  European  history  is  a  history 
of  consolidation.  Little  states  were  found  to  be  a  nuisance 
and  got  swallowed  up,  and  the  time  is  approaching  when 


DUBLIN  151 

the  whole  world  will  be  federated  and  this  nonsensical  idea 
of  patriotism  which  has  created  all  the  wars  that  have 
devastated  the  world  will  disappear.  Well,  in  the  British 
Empire  we  have  a  great  world  federation  already  in  being, 
which  will  be  the  model  for  the  federation  of  the  rest  of  the 
world.  We're  given  the  opportunity  to  be  a  free  part  of  it, 
and  yet  you'd  separate  us  from  it  and  add  one  more  to  the 
muddle  of  flags  and  frontiers  that  makes  the  world  so 
confused  and  quarrelsome." 

"  Yes,"  interjected  O'Dwyer  hastily.  "  If  we're  ever  to 
join  that  confederation  we  must  leave  it  first  and  then,  if  we 
like,  join  it  by  negotiation  as  with  an  equal.  We've  always 
denied  England's  right  to  legislate  for  us,  so  what  right  can 
she  have  to  settle  our  place  and  rights  in  the  confederation? 
You're  a  logical  man,  Manders.  Can't  you  see  that  if  we 
once  grant  England's  right  to  give  us  self-government  we 
also  grant  her  right  to  take  it  away?  Our  whole  case  logic- 
ally rests  on  our  natural  right  to  independence." 

"  Yes.     But  politics  aren't  logical." 

"  When  your  case  is  logical  it's  dangerous  to  use  illogical 
methods.  They  recoil  on  you  in  the  end." 

"  There's  a  nice  bit  of  goods,"  said  Crowley  suddenly  as 
a  girl  undergraduate  passed  by,  leaning  forward  against  the 
wind,  hat  flapping  and  skirts  fluttering. 

"  Queer  how  the  eternal  feminine  will  distract  us  from 
any  topic  however  interesting,"  said  O'Dwyer,  looking  after 
the  girl's  receding  figure. 

"  Not  in  Crowley's  case,"  put  in  Bernard.  "  I  know  what 
you  were  hoping  for,"  he  said  to  Crowley.  "  You  must  be 
one  of  Max  Nordau's  degenerates." 

"  Perhaps  I  am,"  said  Crowley,  not  at  all  disturbed. 
"  But  what  harm  ?  We're  a  mixed  lot,  all  of  us.  Bribery 
couldn't  lure  me  to  serve  England,  and  yet  I  can't  resist  the 
lure  of  a  petticoat.  The  kindest  hearted  man  I  ever  knew 
was  a  drunkard  and  a  thief,  and  the  most  honourable  was  a 
tyrannical  bigot.  We're  all  streaked  and  crossed.  Look  at 
McGurk.  He  spends  his  days  serving  Cathleen  ni  Houlihan 


152  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

at  6,  Harcourt  Street,  and  his  nights  with  Kitty  Hoolahan 
of  Tyrone  Street." 

"  Here,  less  o'  that !  "  said  McGurk  indignantly.  "  I 
sometimes  give  Kitty  a  night  off." 

"  I  wonder,  McGurk,"  said  Bernard,  "  if  in  the  exuber- 
ance of  your  spirits  on  these  occasions  you  ever  consider  the 
other  side  of  that  question.  Does  it  never  occur  to  you  that 
you're  merely  taking  advantage  of  conditions  imposed  by  the 
existing  social  system  ?  " 

"  Ah,  galong  with  yer  preaching?  "  said  McGurk. 

Here  O'Dwyer,  whose  eyes  had  assumed  the  introspective 
look  of  composition,  began  to  recite: 

"  There  was  a  young  fellow  called  Crowley 
Whose  desires  were  not  wholly  unholy  ..." 

Thereat  politics  were  by  general  consent  dropped  and  they 
set  themselves  to  the  serious  task  of  completing  the  Limerick. 

Those  two  years  seemed  to  be  punctuated  by  talks  such  as 
these:  crude  wrangling  arguments  about  generalities,  de- 
generating as  often  as  not  into  ribaldry.  Then  came  the 
passage,  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  through  the  British  House 
of  Commons  and  its  rejection  a  little  later  by  the  Lords. 
Lynch  and  Manders  and  Home  Rulers  generally  were  in  no 
wise  perturbed  by  this.  Under  the  Parliament  Act,  they 
pointed  out,  the  Lords  could  no  longer  reject  but  only  delay 
a  measure  to  which  they  objected.  Then  came  that  shock 
of  reality  in  politics,  the  foundation  of  the  Ulster  Volunteers. 
Lynch  foamed  with  rage  at  the  event  and  groaned  over  this 
"  violation  of  constitutional  principles."  Less  orthodox 
Home  Rulers  felt  afraid  that  this  complication  might  give 
the  Liberals  an  excuse  to  violate  their  pledges,  but 
O'Dwyer,  Crowley,  and  McGurk  looked  upon  the  move- 
ment with  unmixed  joy. 

"  Who  said  Ulster  was  loyal?  "  asked  O'Dwyer.  "  That's 
the  way  to  treat  a  British  Government.  .  .  .  Bully  it." 

"What  price  physical  force  now?  "  said  Crowley.  "  Let 
the  U.I.L.  chaunt  a  quanta  patimur." 


DUBLIN  153 

"  All  I  can  say,"  said  McGurk,  "  is  that  Carson  must  be 
the  hell  of  a  bloody  fine  leader.  Wish  to  God  he  was  on 
our  side." 

7 

Bernard's  coming  of  age  was  celebrated  with  venison  and 
pops  of  Sillery.  Sir  Eugene  shone  his  brightest  in  the  char- 
acter of  host,  and  Lady  Lascelles  chatted  amiably  at  the 
foot  of  the  table.  All  the  Harveys  were  present  and  the 
Heuston  Harringtons,  and  Bernard  to  his  joy  had  Dora  by 
his  side.  Of  his  College  friends  he  had  invited  only  Crowley 
and  O'Dwyer,  and  their  conversation  was  really  the  life  of 
the  party.  Crowley 's  urbane  wit,  with  its  quaint  spicing  of 
classical  quotations  and  long-winded  periphrasis,  was  no  less 
delightful  for  being  expurgated;  and  O'Dwyer  talked  alter- 
nate nonsense  and  philosophy  until  his  hearers  found  dis- 
tinction difficult.  Fergus  Moore,  who  was  also  present, 
made  little  contribution  to  the  conversation  beyond  an  occa- 
sional bitter  interjection  into  O'Dwyer's  philosophizing. 
Teddy  Conroy,  a  Trinity  man  and  a  friend  of  Eugene's,  was 
another  guest.  Near  to  him  sat  Eugene  himself,  jealously 
eyeing  Bernard's  obvious  happiness,  and  comparing  his  in- 
numerable successful  light  love  affairs  with  his  own  hopeless 
devotion,  now  nearly  two  years  old,  to  Conroy's  sister. 
Eugene's  younger  brother  Sandy,  just  home  from  school, 
seemed  completely  monopolized  by  Mabel,  the  youngest  of 
the  Harveys.  It  was  a  brilliant  and  successful  party. 

Two  days  later  Sir  Eugene  came  to  Bernard's  room  with 
an  opened  letter  in  his  hand. 

"  I'm  sorry,  Bernard,"  he  said.  "  I  opened  this  without 
noticing  the  envelope." 

"  Don't  mention  it,"  said  Bernard.  His  father's  cor- 
respondence was  so  large  that  the  mistake  was  of  common 
occurrence. 

In  the  envelope  Bernard  found  a  letter  and  an  enclosure. 
The  letter  was  from  a  well-known  Dublin  solicitor  asking 
for  an  interview  in  connection  with  the  contents  of  the 


i54  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

enclosure,  to  which  Bernard  now  turned  his  attention.  It 
was  an  envelope  addressed  simply: 

Bernard  Lascelles,  Esq. 

and  in  one  corner  was  written:  to  be  opened  on  his  twenty- 
first  birthday.  The  writing  was  strange  to  Bernard  and  it 
had  evidently  been  written  a  long  time  ago,  for  the  ink  was 
bleached  and  the  envelope  itself  showed  unmistakable  signs 
of  age.  Bernard  opened  it  and  took  out  the  following  let- 
ter: 

3rd  January,  1899. 
My  dear  Bernard: 

If  ever  you  read  this  letter  you  will  be  reading  the  words 
of  a  dead  man,  for  I  am  starting  out  on  an  enterprise  which 
may  cost  me  my  life.  What  little  money  I  have  I  am  leav- 
ing by  will  to  you,  my  godson.  It  will  not  be  enough  to 
live  on,  for  which  I  am  glad,  as  I  should  not  like  to  encour- 
age you  to  live  an  idle  life  (not  that  I  think  you  would  ever 
want  to),  but  you  will  find  it  a  help  in  the  early  struggling 
years  in  whatever  profession  you  take  up.  Mr.  Murchison, 
my  friend  and  solicitor,  will  give  you  full  particulars. 
Pray  for  me. 

Your  affectionate  Uncle, 

CHRISTOPHER  REILLY. 

Bernard  sat  pondering  over  the  letter  for  a  long  time. 
Memories  of  his  kind,  clever,  handsome  uncle  passed  before 
his  mind's  eye.  A  question  suddenly  sprang  up  within  him: 

"  I  wonder  what  became  of  Cuchulaint  " 

He  returned  to  the  letter  again.  It  was  written  in  a  very 
small  hand,  sloping  backwards  —  an  unusual  hand. 

"  Not  the  sort  of  writing  I'd  have  expected  from  Uncle 
Chris,"  he  commented  to  himself.  "  Well,  now  for  Mr. 
Murchison." 

8 

Bernard's  favourite  sport  was  yachting.  He  was  a  mem- 
ber of  a  small  club  at  Kingstown  and  was  one  of  the  crew 


DUBLIN  155 

of  three  who  sailed  Fergus  Moore's  yacht  in  the  frequent 
races  and  regattas  of  the  summer.  To  possess  a  craft  of  his 
own  was  his  highest  ambition,  as  it  is  of  all  true  seamen, 
and  his  uncle's  beneficence  gave  him  the  opportunity  to 
gratify  it.  He  expended  the  whole  of  his  first  quarter's 
income  on  a  little  half-decked  yacht,  and  in  it  he  explored 
by  himself  the  whole  of  Dublin  Bay,  and  sometimes  sailed 
down  the  coast  to  Wicklow  and  up  to  Malahide.  Sailing  is 
a  pastime  that  satisfies  every  mood.  He  rejoiced  in  the  ex- 
hilaration of  a  battle  with  stiff  breezes  that  lashed  him  with 
spray  while  the  hard  green  water  crunched  under  his  lee 
timbers:  and  again  when  the  breeze  was  light  and  the  sun 
shining  he  would  heave  to  and  lie  for  hours  in  tranquil  en- 
joyment. 

Meanwhile  College  life  pursued  its  accustomed  way. 
Those  of  Bernard's  friends  who  were  taking  courses  shorter 
than  medicine  qualified  and  passed  out.  The  first  to  go  was 
Jack  Harvey,  who,  having  obtained  his  B.A.,  was  given  a 
post  as  tutor  to  the  son  of  the  Russian  consul.  (His  mother 
never  tired  thereafter  of  talking  of  "  my  son  in  the  Russian 
Diplomatic  Service.")  Next  year  Manders  was  called  to  the 
Bar,  and  Molloy  set  up  as  a  solicitor.  Mallow  still  re- 
mained as  a  "  chronic  "  engineer,  and  Moore  never  seemed 
tired  of  taking  out  new  courses. 

If  Bernard's  politics  still  remained  in  a  state  of  flux  Moore 
was  to  a  large  extent  responsible.  His  pessimistic  outlook 
on  life  exercised  a  strange  fascination  over  his  younger  friend. 
A  conversation  in  College  would  turn  Bernard's  opinions 
definitely  Nationalist,  and  then  Moore  would  come  out  with 
a  torrent  of  obloquy  and  abuse  for  the  Irish  character  — 
scarcely  less  vehement  than  his  philippics  against  England 
—  against  which  Bernard,  destitute  of  O'Dwyer's  knowledge 
of  facts  and  ultimate  causes,  could  make  no  defence,  and 
came  almost  to  consider  that  his  country  was  not  worth 
saving.  And  if  he  expressed  a  desire  to  read  Irish  His- 
tory and  so  form  an  opinion  of  his  own,  Moore  always 
said: 


156  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Don't.  It's  too  horrible.  It'll  only  embitter  your  life 
as  it  did  mine." 

Many  and  varied  were  the  conversations  they  held  at  this 
time  on  the  steps  of  the  College  on  Stephen's  Green.  One 
day  Brian  Mallow  in  his  truculent  way  was  inveighing 
against  a  recent  production  of  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen  at  the 
Abbey  and  was  supported  by  a  man  called  Mullery,  an  en- 
thusiastic member  of  the  then  discredited  Sinn  Fein  follow- 
ing. Moore  had  been  listening  in  patience  for  a  while  and 
then  burst  out  with  characteristic  scorn  and  heat: 

"What  idiot  ever  called  the  Irish  an  intelligent  people? 
The  Greek's  didn't  think  Oedipus  Tyrranus  accused  them 
all  of  incest.  The  Scots  didn't  think  Macbeth  accused  them 
all  of  murder.  The  English  didn't  think  Lear  accused  them 
of  lack  of  family  feeling.  Yet  we  Irish  fly  into  a  rage  over  a 
play  that  contains  an  unchaste  Irishwoman  just  as  if  it  was 
a  reflection  on  the  whole  race.  It's  simply  absurd !  " 

"  The  play's  a  libel  on  Irishwomen,"  said  Mullery. 

"  A  hellish  libel,"  reiterated  Mallow.  "  Only  a  cynical 
West  Briton  like  Moore  could  put  up  with  it." 

"  Have  sense,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  I'm  no  West  Briton,  as 
you  ought  to  know,  and  I  agree  with  Moore.  It's  quite 
true  that  we  Irish  are  an  exceptionally  chaste  people,  but 
we've  no  business  to  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  an  unchaste 
Irishwoman  is  an  impossibility.  .  .  .  Statistics  alone  should 
prevent  that." 

"  What  statistics?  "  said  Mullery. 

"  The  illegitimacy  statistics." 

"  They're  lower  than  in  any  other  country." 

"  Yes.  Because  the  priests  make  the  people  marry  when 
consequences  become  inevitable." 

"  Rot,"  said  Mallow.     "  It's  our  chastity." 

"  That  talk  about  the  chastity  of  Irishwomen,"  said 
Moore,  "  is  the  damnedest  nonsense  ever  heard.  Look  at  the 
streets  of  Dublin." 

"  Cities  are  exceptional,"  said  Mullery. 

"  And  most  of  the  women  are  foreigners,"  said  Mallow. 


DUBLIN  157 

"  Prove  it,"  said  Moore. 

"  Irishwomen  are  chaste,"  repeated  Mallow  dogmatically. 

Here  McGurk,  who  had  not  yet  spoken,  burst  into  ribald 
mirth. 

"Chaste  me  neck!"  he  said.  "I  never  had  any  diffi- 
culty with  them." 

At  this  Mullery  and  Mallow  walked  off  in  disgust. 

"  The  worst  fault  of  us  Irish,"  said  Moore,  "  is  our  vanity 
and  objection  to  criticism  or  satire.  The  English  on  the 
other  hand  are  so  self-satisfied  that  satire  doesn't  affect  them 
at  all.  I  wonder  which  is  the  worse  way  to  be." 

"  In  our  case,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  it  isn't  our  own  fault. 
It's  the  re-action  to  England's  calumny." 

"  But  for  sheer  national  truculence,"  said  Moore,  "  Mal- 
low and  the  Morning  Post  are  at  one." 

The  Labour  troubles  just  then  beginning  were  a  frequent 
subject  of  discussion  among  the  students,  and  here  Bernard 
had  definite  views  and  was  a  prominent  disputant.  He  was 
amazed  to  find  that  the  revolutionaries  on  the  National  issue, 
Mallow,  Mullery  and  others,  were  reactionaries  on  this 
point.  But  there  were  differences  amongst  them.  Mallow 
held  strongly  ultramontane  views  and  based  his  attacks  on 
labour  on  clerical  arguments,  whereas  Mullery  was  rather 
annoyed  to  find  the  priests,  those  determined  enemies  of 
his  adored  Fenians,  on  his  side,  and  confined  his  opposition 
to  the  international  doctrines  of  the  leaders.  Of  the  actual 
economic  conditions  which  were  responsible  for  the  trouble 
all  the  young  doctrinaires  were  comparatively  ignorant,  and 
their  arguments  were  generally  on  principles  and  general- 
ities and  as  often  as  not  went  in  a  circle.  "  People  don't 
undergo  the  losses  and  hardships  of  a  strike  for  nothing," 
was  Bernard's  usual  argument.  "  Strikers  are  not  always 
in  the  right,  but  you  will  generally  be  on  the  safe  side  in 
assuming  that  they  are."  He  was  glad  to  find  that  O'Dwyer 
was  on  the  revolutionary  side  in  this  matter,  and  their  former 
friendship,  so  rudely  broken  at  Ashbury,  began  to  revive. 


158  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

9 

It  was  through  Eugene,  who  was  now  in  Trinity  College, 
that  Bernard  became  acquainted  with  Fred  Heuston  Har- 
rington and  through  him  with  his  mother.  Bernard  had 
dropped  in  to  Eugene's  rooms  in  Trinity  and  found  Har- 
rington there.  He  was  a  nice  young  man,  good-looking 
and  polished,  but  not  particularly  intelligent,  and  Bernard 
cultivated  his  acquaintance  at  once  in  the  hope  of  meeting 
again  his  sister  Dora  whom  he  had  not  seen  for  several 
months. 

About  this  period  Bernard  began  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life  to  know  his  brother.  Since  they  had  first  gone  to  school 
they  had  always  been  separated,  and  moreover  Eugene's 
mental  development  was  not  only  actually  but  relatively 
slower  than  Bernard's,  which  rendered  companionship  be- 
tween them  impossible.  Now  it  was  different.  At  twenty 
years  of  age  Eugene  had  a  definite  philosophy  and  definite 
politics  and  was  a  capable,  if  not  a  brilliant,  controversialist. 
Friendship  with  O'Dwyer  had,  in  his  last  years  at  Ashbury, 
made  him  a  Nationalist,  but  with  inborn  sentiments  for  the 
British  -  connexion  which  O'Dwyer's  sarcasms  failed  to 
eradicate.  The  brothers  bore  little  resemblance  one  to  the 
other.  Eugene  was  pious,  gentle  and  unobtrusive;  Bernard 
quite  the  reverse.  Eugene's  manner  was  courteous  and  dig- 
nified; Bernard's  good  breeding  barely  concealed  his  natural 
rudeness  and  impatience.  Eugene's  polished  conversation 
contrasted  strongly  with  Bernard's  jerky  argumentative  man- 
ner, and  his  voice,  calm  and  well-modulated,  was  more  pleas- 
ing to  the  ear  than  Bernard's,  which  in  moments  of  excite- 
ment became  high-pitched  and  raucous.  Eugene's  dress  was 
inexpensive  yet  neat;  Bernard's  extravagant  yet  untidy. 
Bernard  was  lean  and  sinewy  with  narrow  loins,  and  broad 
shoulders;  his  head  was  large,  with  brown  hair  straggling 
over  his  fine  broad  brow;  he  had  deep-set  blue  eyes  and 
strong  cream  coloured  teeth  irregularly  set  in  his  square  hard 
jaw.  Eugene's  limbs  were  almost  feminine  in  their  round- 


DUBLIN  159 

ness;  his  face  was  al~nost  chubby,  his  teeth  white  and  even, 
and  his  hair  black,  sleek,  and  carefully  brushed. 

When  they  had  discovered  each  other's  politics  Eugene 
said: 

"  What'll  the  governor  say  when  he  finds  out?  He  hates 
Socialists,  but  Nationalists  are  anathema." 

"  He'll  never  find  out,"  replied  Bernard.  "  It  would 
never  occur  to  him  that  we  could  be  such  fools  as  to  differ 
from  him." 

"Still  hankering  after  Dora?"  inquired  Eugene. 

"  More  or  less,"  Bernard  admitted. 

"  I  must  wring  an  invitation  out  of  Fred,"  said  Eugene. 

"  Decent  chap,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Don't  mention  it.     You'd  do  the  same  for  me  I'm  sure." 

It  was  not  long  before  Bernard  and  Eugene  were  invited 
by  Fred  to  one  of  his  mother's  at-homes.  Mrs.  Heuston 
Harrington  was  the  widow  of  a  well  known  literary  and  art 
critic,  and  though  her  natural  taste  for  these  things  was 
small  it  had  been  highly  cultivated  by  intercourse  with  her 
husband.  Her  intellectual  reputation  was  great  and  to  her 
at-homes  foregathered  hosts  of  unknown  and  rising  people 
in  the  artistic  world.  Here  they  chattered  and  sipped  tea 
and  smoked  cigarettes  and  posed  and  strutted  and  flattered 
each  other,  and  Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington  moved  about 
among  them  feeling  like  a  modern  Aspasia  or  Madame  de 
Stael. 

On  Bernard's  first  visit  the  room  was  crowded  with  guests 
and  he  had  no  opportunity  of  speaking  to  his  hostess.  How- 
ever he  made  the  acquaintance  of  one  young  man  who  in- 
terested and  amused  him.  He  was  a  poet  named  Edwin 
D'Arcy  who  had  published  one  very  slender  volume  and 
neglected  his  hair  and  cultivated  his  tie  on  the  strength  of 
it.  He  talked  feelingly  of  art  and  his  own  temperament 
most  of  the  evening  and  presented  Bernard  with  a  copy  of 
his  book  Earth  Songs  which  he  happened  to  have  in  his 
pocket.  Bernard  glanced  through  it  at  home  that  evening 


i6o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  found  it  full  of  Mist,  Purple,  Dreams,  and  Visions,  and 
of  invocations  to  Love  and  My  Soul. 

Dora  vouchsafed  him  only  a  word  or  two  on  this  occasion 
and  made  him  very  jealous  by  ostentatiously  cultivating 
D'Arcy.  However  on  a  subsequent  visit  she  gave  him  her 
undivided  attention,  and  confided  to  him  that  she  simply 
hated  D'Arcy,  he  was  such  a  conceited  young  ass.  Bernard 
fondly  imagined  that  she  was  trying  to  allay  his  jealousy  and 
made  up  for  her  former  treatment,  but  Dora  was  really 
speaking  the  literal  truth  and  was  seeking  Bernard's  society 
simply  because  she  found  him  interesting.  While  the  other 
guests  walked  about  and  chattered  Bernard  and  Dora  sat 
in  a  corner  deep  in  conversation.  From  the  usual  prelim- 
inaries about  books  and  plays  they  came  at  length  to  solider 
subjects.  Bernard  confessed  to  unorthodox  religious  views 
and  Dora  announced  that  she  was  an  agnostic. 

"  I've  never  been  baptized,"  she  said.  "  You  see,  father 
was  always  an  agnostic  and  mother  soon  became  one.  Re- 
ligion has  its  good  points,  I'm  sure,  but  I'm  glad  I  haven't 
any.  It  leaves  your  mind  so  much  freer." 

"  I'm  not  sure  that  it  does,"  said  Bernard.  "  Any  more 
than  lawlessness  would  make  your  body  freer." 

"  But  all  these  religious  dogmas  are  so  narrowing.  They 
stop  all  freedom  of  thought." 

"  Freedom  of  thought  isn't  necessarily  and  intrinsically 
a  good  thing.  Suppose  for  a  minute  that  some  particular 
thing  is  true.  Take  anything  as  an  example:  transubstan- 
tiation,  say.  I  know  you  don't  believe  in  it,  but  grant  it 
true  for  the  sake  of  argument." 

"  Very  well." 

"  Then,  if  it's  true,  and  your  claim  for  freedom  of  thought 
allows  you  to  disbelieve  it,  and  my  bondage  to  religion  makes 
me  believe  it,  surely  I'm  better  off  than  you  in  possessing 
the  truth." 

"  But  how  are  we  to  believe  that  religion  itself  is  true?  " 

"  Ah,  there  we  come  to  the  fundamentals,  and  it's  in  fun- 
damentals that  my  own  doubts  exist.  But  on  the  whole,  my 


DUBLIN  161 

love  of  order,  justice,  and  good  government  makes  me  accept 
an  omnipotent  God  —  expressing  his  will  through  an  in- 
fallible church." 

"  Well,  I'm  for  freedom  of  thought.  How  can  you  hope 
to  attain  to  any  comprehension  of  the  universe  if  there  are 
things  you  must  accept  whether  you  like  it  or  not?  I  don't 
see  myself  being  dictated  to  by  clergymen  as  to  what  I'm  to 
think  or  not  to  think.  I  can't  understand  how  a  person  like 
you  could  submit  to  being  forbidden  to  read  anything  you 
like  by  these  Index  people." 

"  Well,  I'm  afraid  I  don't  bother  very  much  about  the 
Index." 

A  little  later  the  topic  of  Home  Rule  cropped  up. 

"  I  think  it's  awful  nonsense,"  said  Dora.  "  This  coun- 
try simply  couldn't  govern  itself.  It  would  be  on  the  rocks 
in  a  month." 

"  How  do  you  make  that  out?  " 

"  Why,  it's  obvious." 

"  In  what  way?  " 

"  I  can't  tell  you  much  about  it,  because  I'm  no  politi- 
cian. I  just  know  it.  Every  one  with  any  sense  knows 
it." 

"  I  thought  you  didn't  like  dogmas,"  said  Bernard. 
"  And  here  you  take  for  granted  the  opinions  of  politicians 
and  journalists  who  have  far  less  claim  to  knowledge  and 
disinterestedness  than  priests  have  in  religion.  I  can  see  it 
didn't  take  any  index  to  prevent  you  reading  the  opposite 
side  in  the  controversy." 

"  I  don't  take  any  interest  in  politics  anyway,"  said  Dora 
huffily. 

"Then  why  dogmatize  about  them?" 

"  Let's  talk  of  something  else,"  said  Dora,  and  brought 
back  the  conversation  to  literature  again. 

"  Poor  narrow  little  mind,"  thought  Bernard,  "  that 
thinks  itself  so  big.  Instead  of  stuffing  your  head  with 
ideas  it  was  too  small  to  hold  you'd  have  been  better  em- 
ployed in  using  that  graceful  figure  of  yours  to  secure  a  mate 


1 62  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  populate  the  world.  Comprehend  the  universe,  in- 
deed! Why,  you're  too  small  even  to  wonder  at  it." 

How  hollow  her  intellectuality  now  appeared.  To  the 
note  of  revolt  that  sounds  through  the  major  part  of  all  great 
literature  she  was  absolutely  deaf.  She  professed  to  admire 
Shakespeare,  but  heard  not  his  cry  of  universal  charity  and 
brotherhood.  She  professed  to  admire  Dickens,  but  re- 
sponded not  to  his  pleading  for  the  poor  and  down  trodden. 
She  professed  to  admire  Dostoieffsky  but  was  not  moved  to 
any  indignation  against  autocratic  tyranny.  She  professed 
an  overwhelming  admiration  for  Shaw  but  his  plea  for  clarity 
of  thinking  and  ruthless  reasoning,  and  the  social  philosophy 
which  was  the  very  essence  of  the  man  meant  nothing  to  her. 
In  Shakespeare  she  saw  only  a  supreme  dramatist  and  master 
of  poetic  diction;  in  Dickens  only  a  great  creator  of  char- 
acters; in  Dostoieffsky  only  a  grimly  tragic  story  teller;  in 
Shaw  only  a  clever  comedian.  It  was  all  she  had  been  told 
to  see. 

She  mentioned  Keats'  Isabella  as  a  favourite  poem,  and 
Bernard  quoted  the  fierce  attack  on  Capitalism  in  the  stanza 
beginning: 

For  them  the  Ceylon  diver  held  his  breath, 
And  went  all  naked  to  the  hungry  shark. 

Her  only  comment  was  to  the  effect  that  "  noisy  factories  " 
was  not  a  very  poetic  phrase. 

They  wound  up  with  small-talk,  and  Bernard  found  that 
this  was  what  suited  her  best.  She  abused  this  person's  hat 
and  that  person's  dress,  some  one  else's  manners  and  yet 
another  person's  pedigree.  In  fine,  she  exposed  in  its  en- 
tirety the  native  conventionalism  of  her  mind.  To  Bernard 
it  was  a  revelation.  He  obtained  an  insight  into  her  soul, 
for  the  smallness  of  which  not  even  her  body's  grace  could 
compensate. 

(I  am  afraid,  ladies,  that  you  are  getting  a  little  impatient 
of  the  facility  with  which  our  hero  falls  in  and  out  of  love. 
"  Surely,"  you  say,  "  that  is  not  usual  in  a  young  man.  Our 


DUBLIN  163 

own  sweethearts  have  told  us  they  never  loved  before." 
Mesdemoiselles,  in  loving-kindness  they  deceive  you.  They 
would  spare  you  the  pangs  of  jealousy  retrospective,  which 
is  the  worst  kind  of  jealousy.  We  men  are  all  alike,  and 
Bernard  is  one  of  us.) 

On  yet  another  visit  he  had  a  short  colloquy  with  Dora's 
mother.  At  first  she  talked,  in  her  facile  clever  way,  of 
books  and  music,  and  Bernard  could  see  whence  came  Dora's 
opinions.  He  succeeded  eventually  in  drawing  her  to  poli- 
tics, and  the  admirer  of  Shelley  and  Shaw  spoke  thus: 

"  These  labour  troubles  are  a  frightful  nuisance,  don't 
you  think?  Why  on  earth  can't  the  workers  be  reasonable? 
These  people,  like  that  awful  man  Larkin,  coming  along  and 
stirring  up  discontent,  they  ought  to  be  shot.  .  .  .  But 
don't  let's  talk  politics  —  In  my  opinion  they're  the  real 
curse  of  this  country.  How  I  wish  we  could  get  away  from 
them,  but  people  drag  them  in  everywhere.  .  .  .  Now,  what 
do  you  think  of  this?  I'm  trying  to  run  some  concerts  in 
the  winter  and  we've  got  a  mixed  committee  together  to 
manage  them.  .  .  .  Well,  the  whole  business  is  held  up  at 
present  because  some  of  the  Nationalists  on  it  object  to  hav- 
ing God  Save  the  King  played  at  the  end." 

"  Well,  isn't  it  a  political  act  on  your  side  to  insist  on 
having  it?  " 

"  Oh,  nonsense.     The  King  is  above  politics." 

"  But  the  Nationalist  point  of  view  is  that  they  won't 
recognize  the  King  until  what  they  consider  their  rights  are 
restored  to  them." 

"  But  that's  disloyalty." 

"  Not  from  their  point  of  view." 

"  They've  no  right  to  have  such  a  point  of  view,"  said  the 
apostle  of  freedom  of  thought. 

Then  she  passed  on  to  other  subjects.  She  gave  her  opin- 
ions on  various  Dublin  personalities,  and  her  opinions  were 
almost  invariably  uncomplimentary.  One  person  was  a  fool, 
another  a  knave,  another  not  a  gentleman.  Then  she  moved 
on  to  another  guest. 


164  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Bernard  found  himself  next  to  Edwin  D'Arcy  again  and 
tried  to  sound  him  on  the  subject  of  the  strike. 

"  Oh !  "  said  the  poet  mellifluously,  "  I  think  these  affairs 
are  beneath  the  artist's  attention." 

"  I  say,  Eugene,"  said  Bernard,  as  the  brothers  left  the 
house,  "  Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington  is  a  treat.  I'd  like  to 
put  her  in  a  novel,  only  people  would  say  she's  too  con- 
tradictory to  be  true  to  life.  Do  you  know  that  she  believes 
in  palmistry,  and  yet  she  considers  our  religion  superstition  ? 
I  think  she's  the  clearest  vindication  of  Pope's  rather  ques- 
tionable line  about  a  little  learning  being  a  dangerous  thing. 
She  fancies  herself  to  be  tremendously  broadminded,  so  she 
professes  agnosticism  as  a  revolt  against  the  narrowness  of 
dogma,  and  at  the  same  time  her  whole  system  of  politics 
is  a  collection  of  the  silliest  little  old-fashioned  dogmas  you 
ever  heard.  It's  all  '  Agitators  ought  to  be  hanged,'  and 
'  Socialism  is  nonsense,'  and  '  the  present  Social  system  is 
inevitable  and  quite  good  enough,'  and  '  the  Irish  are  so 
disloyal,'  and,  God  help  her,  '  England  is  a  free  country.' 
Why,  her  very  agnosticism  is  dogmatic.  Christianity 
preaches,  on  excellent  grounds,  the  dogma  of  the  Virgin 
Birth  of  Christ,  and  Mrs.  Agnostic,  on  no  grounds  at  all, 
simply  trots  out  the  dogma  that  it's  impossible." 

Eugene  was  never  quick  on  the  uptake. 

"  Your  own  faith  isn't  so  good  that  you  can  complain  of 
other  people,"  he  said. 

Bernard  gasped  with  that  helpless  feeling  that  always 
came  over  him  when  he  failed  to  make  himself  clear  to 
slower  witted  people.  It  was  the  principal  barrier  between 
him  and  his  mother  and  Eugene.  Time  was  when  he  had 
made  attempts  to  cross  it,  but  he  never  succeeded  in  doing 
anything  but  exasperate  himself  and  earn  a  reputation  for 
rudeness  and  ill  temper.  Now  he  had  learnt  by  experience 
and  always  took  refuge,  as  here,  in  silence. 

At  Fred's  solicitation  they  visited  the  house  frequently 
again. 

"  I  say,  Eugene,"  said  Bernard,  after  one  such  occasion, 


DUBLIN  165 

"  at  one  time  I  couldn't  see  much  in  Christianity's  praise 
of  the  virtue  of  humility,  but  I  do  now.  Ten  minutes  of 
conversation  with  Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington  have  done  more 
than  a  life  time  of  Christian  teaching  to  show  me  the  real 
beauty  of  Christ's  words:  'Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,' 
and  '  Blessed  are  the  meek.'  Henceforth  I'm  a  Christian." 

"It's  taken  you  a  long  time  to  get  back  to  the  faith  you 
were  born  in,"  said  Eugene. 

"  I  think  it's  better  to  have  doubted  and  returned  than 
never  to  have  doubted  at  all,"  was  Bernard's  reply,  and 
Eugene  prayed  for  his  faith  in  the  night. 

10 

For  all  his  re-awakening  revolutionary  ardour  Bernard 
consented  to  go  to  the  Castle.  Partly  it  was  because  his 
father  and  mother  desired  it,  partly  it  was  because  he  en- 
joyed any  kind  of  festivity,  and  partly  it  was  because  he  was 
always  glad  to  get  new  experiences.  Moreover  Alice  was  to 
make  her  debut  that  season  and  she  prettily  implored  him  to 
be  a  spectator  of  her  glory.  At  any  rate  he  went. 

The  Drawing-Room  was  a  brilliant  affair.  The  Lascelles 
motor  took  its  place  in  the  queue  of  vehicles  leading  to  the 
Upper  Castle  Yard.  It  was  a  strange,  motley  queue.  The 
more  prosperous  courtiers  came  in  private  motors,  from 
gorgeous  landaulettes  to  battered  two-seaters,  while  the  less 
fortunate  ones  came  in  hired  cabs,  looking  as  they  sat  in  their 
finery  in  these  dingy  equipages  for  all  the  world  like  dia- 
monds set  in  tarnished  pewter.  The  queue  moved  at  a  snail's 
pace  and  for  the  best  part  of  an  hour  these  seekers  after 
place  and  pleasure  had  to  endure  cramp  and  tedium.  To 
many,  however,  the  wondering  gaze  of  the  poor  women  and 
urchins  of  Cork  Hill  and  the  neighbourhood,  and  the  salutes 
of  the  white-gloved  constables  on  duty  were  ample  recom- 
pense. 

Dublin  Castle  is  at  once  the  most  sinister  and  the  most 
ridiculous  feature  in  Irish  life.  It  is  the  centre  and  strong- 
hold of  foreign  domination  and  the  playhouse  of  native 


1 66  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

snobbery.  In  its  dungeons  Ireland's  noblest  children  have 
languished;  in  its  drawing-rooms  her  meanest  and  pettiest 
have  simpered.  And  today  it  holds  within  its  walls  a  sham, 
meaningless,  tawdry  court  attended  by  the  silliest,  narro\vest 
and  most  servile  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

There  were  knights  in  scores  and  would-be  knights  in 
hundreds,  with  here  and  there  an  odd  baronet  or  a  stray 
viscount.  Among  the  throng  you  could  distinguish  Sir  Perry 
Tifflytis  who  had  preserved  a  Viceroy's  useless  cousin  to 
cumber  the  earth,  and  Mr.  Bonegraft  who  hoped  for  an 
opportunity  to  do  the  same.  Not  far  off  was  Sir  Timkins 
Tidbit  who  got  knighted  by  mistake  owing  to  a  relative 
having  charge  of  the  honours  list.  He  was  engaged  in  con- 
versation with  Sir  Everard  Backwood,  better  known  as  the 
Lord  Mayor  of  Ballygutter,  who  had  had  the  good  fortune 
to  be  chairman  of  the  council  of  that  municipality  during  a 
royal  visit.  Looking  rather  bashful  and  out  of  place  was  the 
uncouth  form  of  Sir  Cornelius  O'Tractor  skulking  behind  a 
pillar.  He  had  been  knighted  as  a  reward  for  bringing  a 
"  loyalist  "  motion  before  the  Corporation  and  he  found  pres- 
ent company  just  a  little  oppressive.  In  another  corner  was 
Mr.  Whitelead  who  hoped  to  get  the  contract  for  repainting 
St.  Patrick's  Hall  and  was  taking  even  now  a  mental  esti- 
mate of  the  cost.  And  then  there  were  the  knights  who  had 
got  their  titles  no  one  knew  how,  and  those  whose  gallant 
deeds  were  lost  in  the  mist  of  legend.  And  among  this  bevy 
of  Sirs  strolled  the  baronets  and  the  viscounts  serenely  aloof 
and  contemptuous  of  the  servility  of  their  inferiors. 

But  we  are  forgetting  the  ladies.  In  plumes  and  lappets 
and  seven-foot  trains,  blazing  with  real  and  sham  jewellery, 
they  were  a  glorious  sight.  There  were  Countesses  and 
Baronesses  of  course,  but  they  are  beyond  our  purview. 
We  shall  content  ourselves  by  recognizing  the  wives  of  the 
knights  and  squires.  There  was  Lady  Mallaby  Morchoe 
who  would  not  deign  to  notice  Lady  Lascelles  whose  hus- 
band had  been  knighted  a  year  later  than  her  own.  There 


DUBLIN  167 

was  aggressive  Lady  Liverlung,  but  three  months  titled  and 
still  angry  over  her  long  wait  for  the  distinction.  There 
was  Lady  Backwood,  stately  and  silent,  who  was  of  aristo- 
cratic blood  and  whose  recently  obtained  title  was  but  an 
accessory.  She  looked  around  the  gathering  with  an  ex- 
pression that  plainly  said:  "Every  one  seems  to  come  to 
the  Drawing-Room  now."  There  was  Lady  This  and  Lady 
That  and  Lady  the  Rest  of  It,  and  Lady  Lascelles  pointed 
them  all  out  to  her  son. 

Then  there  were  the  commoners.  There  was  Mrs.  Gunby 
Rourke  plainly  enjoying  herself,  and  Mrs.  Heuston  Harring- 
ton doing  the  bored  intellectual  pose,  and  Mrs.  O'Driscoll 
pushing  forward  her  bashful  husband,  and  Mrs.  MacNiff 
the  iron  monger's  wife.  They  were  all  there,  metaphor- 
ically pushing  and  scrambling,  their  petty  little  minds 
clashing,  their  vicious  little  tongues  stabbing  one  another. 

Quite  definitely  the  gathering  was  split  into  two  factions. 
On  the  one  hand  were  the  Unionists,  the  regular  Castle- 
goers,  very  angry  and  disdainful  of  the  crowd  of  National- 
ists whom  the  Aberdeens  had  introduced  into  the  stronghold. 
On  the  other  were  the  Nationalists,  some  aggressive,  some 
rather  overwhelmed,  many  quite  obviously  trying  hard  to 
reconcile  their  attendance  with  their  principles. 

A  hush  fell  upon  the  assembly  and  the  ceremony  of  pre- 
senting the  debutantes  to  their  Excellencies  began.  For 
them  this  was  the  threshold  of  life  and  much  the  finest  part 
of  it.  One  by  one,  glittering  with  jewels  and  swamped  in 
silks  and  satins,  they  swept  up  the  room  and  sank  to  the  floor 
before  the  vice-regal  throne.  In  her  turn  came  Alice, 
proudly  shy. 

One  by  one  they  passed  from  the  presence  and  mingled 
in  the  crowd.  In  a  short  space  they  would  be  married  and 
would  commence  to  urge  their  childr.cn  along  the  road  their 
fathers  had  trod  before  them. 

"  How  did  I  look,  Bernard  ?  "  inquired  Alice. 

"  Splendid,"  said  Bernard. 


1 68  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

When  the  ceremony  was  over  the  bejewelled  throng 
packed  itself  into  its  motors  and  its  cabs  and  drove  homeward 
through  the  murky  streets. 

II 

And  while  the  garrison  and  its  hangers-on  played  courtier, 
and  the  Irish  Party  at  Westminster  played  politics,  out  of 
the  slums  of  the  city  came  a  cry  of  agony:  of  agony  long 
endured  and  no  longer  tolerable.  The  great  Transport 
Strike  had  begun  and  before  the  eyes  of  men  stalked  Reality, 
crude  and  grim  and  menacing. 


CHAPTER  VII 

STEPHEN 


WHILST  all  the  resources  of  parental  and  scholastic 
education  were  being  employed  to  twist  and  distort 
the  mental  growth  of  young  Bernard  Lascelles,  away  in 
Glencoole  Stephen  Ward's  mind  was  developing  as  freely 
and  naturally  as  the  trees  that  surrounded  him.  His  father 
did  little  more  than  supervise  the  education  which  the  boy 
was  giving  himself.  A  suggestion  here,  an  explanation  there, 
and  now  and  then  a  helping  hand  in  difficulties  —  these  were 
all  that  was  required  of  him. 

Michael  Ward  was  not  pious,  but  he  was  fundamentally 
religious,  and  he  was  firmly  determined  that  his  son  should 
learn  his  religion  without  the  aid  of  the  pietistic  stories  and 
pretty  religiosity  by  which  clerics  and  nuns  try  to  make  the 
divine  revelation  interesting  and  acceptable  to  the  young. 
Thus  at  the  age  at  which  Bernard  had  arrived  by  way  of 
Catechism,  miraculous  medals,  "  holy "  pictures,  lives  of 
saints,  and  ignorance  of  the  Gospel  to  an  indefinite  kind  of 
atheism,  Stephen  was  possessed  of  a  synthetic  and  definite 
religious  philosophy.  Quite  early  in  life  the  conception  of  a 
supreme  spirit  came  to  him  without  any  very  great  difficulty 
and  unconfused  by  the  usual  preliminary  notion  of  a  grey- 
bearded  magician  sitting  on  a  cloud.  He  learned  the  theory 
of  creation  without  any  Garden  of  Eden  symbolism  first 
taught  as  fact  to  be  afterwards  unlearned  when  the  first  ap- 
preciation of  science  renders  continued  deception  impossible 
and  to  be  the  starting  point  of  general  doubt.  Straight  from 
this  he  was  taken  to  the  study  of  Christianity  at  its  source  in 
the  New  Testament.  He  was  taught  to  understand  the 
169 


170  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

divine  wisdom  and  beauty  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and 
only  when  he  had  fully  grasped  and  appreciated  this,  the 
foundation  of  the  Christian  religion,  did  he  come  to  the 
dogmata  which  the  Church  has  erected  upon  that  founda- 
tion. 

Then,  when  he  was  in  his  fifteenth  year,  he  began  the 
study  of  Plato.  With  his  father's  help  he  construed  the 
Crito,  the  Apology,  and  the  Phaedo,  and  (herein  he  was 
more  fortunate  than  Bernard)  his  teacher  was  more  con- 
cerned with  the  wisdom  of  the  books  than  with  their  illus- 
tration of  grammatical  rules.  The  analogy  between  the 
Apology  and  the  Passion  of  Christ  struck  Stephen  at  once 
and  he  came  to  have  an  almost  passionate  love  and  admira- 
tion for  Socrates,  so  that,  when  his  Greek  became  fluent 
enough,  the  Apology  ranked  next  in  his  estimation  to  the 
Gospel  of  Saint  Matthew.  Other  stray  philosophical  works 
—  Aristotle,  the  Summum  Theologicum,  Thus  Spake  Zara- 
thustra,  A  Modern  Utopia  —  he  found  in  his  father's  li- 
brary and  read,  but  they  had  none  of  the  influence  of  these 
two. 

On  his  own  account  Stephen  took  to  the  study  of  His- 
tory. He  read  the  histories  of  half  the  countries  of  the  globe 
and  all  the  books  of  travel  he  could  find,  so  that  he  became 
acquainted  with  nearly  every  system  of  government,  good 
and  bad,  known  to  mankind.  Works  of  this  kind  he  read 
with  the  same  avidity  with  which  most  young  men  read 
novels.  For  fiction  made  no  appeal  to  him.  Once  he  had 
picked  up  David  Copperfield  but  tired  of  it  before  the  end 
of  the  first  chapter.  The  Talisman,  being  historical,  pleased 
him  better,  but  the  mixture  of  truths  and  fiction  eventually 
annoyed  him  so  that  he  abandoned  the  tale  unfinished.  Pen- 
dennis  bored  him  before  he  reached  page  three,  and  a  glance 
at  the  first  paragraph  of  Diana  of  the  Crossways  was  more 
than  enough  for  him.  After  that  he  deserted  fiction  for 
good  and  returned  to  his  histories  and  philosophies. 

As  a  result  of  the  course  of  his  education  the  universe  of 
wisdom  and  knowledge  was  to  Stephen  a  great  coherence: 


STEPHEN  171 

Politics,  Philosophy  and  Religion  were  interdependent;  and 
Truth  and  Justice  (or,  to  use  the  Platonic  word  which  ex- 
presses both,  to  dikaion)  absolute  and  universal.  To  one 
trained  in  the  usual  way  such  a  conception  could  only  come 
late  if  at  all.  He  learns  his  religion  first  by  means  of  dog- 
mata in  the  shape  of  an  almost  un-understandable  Catechism ; 
then  he  comes  to  the  New  Testament  in  the  form  of  the 
fragment  of  gospel  read  at  Sunday's  Mass,  which  is  usually 
a  parable  or  a  narrative  of  a  miracle  (and  as  for  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,  his  knowledge  of  it  is  confined  to  the 
opening  sentences  known  as  the  Eight  Beatitudes) ;  and  he 
often  attains  to  no  conception  of  God  as  an  all-permeating 
spirit  until  almost  adult.  To  him,  therefore,  Philosophy 
and  Religion  are  distinct:  the  one  being  "deep,"  a  matter 
of  long  words  and  no  concern  of  his;  the  other  a  matter 
of  prayers  and  observance.  Politics  are  on  a  lower  plane 
altogether,  a  matter  of  votes  and  speeches  and  newspapers, 
which  may  or  may  not  have  an  interest  for  him.  Thus 
he  is  capable  of  imagining  that  what  is  philosophically  right 
may  be  religiously  wrong,  and  vice  versa,  and  of  acquiescing 
in  a  social  or  political  expediency  that  he  knows  to  be  philo- 
sophically unreasonable  without  considering  that  it  is  thereby 
morally  wrong.  In  other  words  the  existing  system  of  men- 
tal education  produces  the  muddled  head,  the  basis  of  nine- 
tenths  of  the  injustice  of  the  world;  where  religion  is  mainly 
a  conflict  between  prejudice  and  prejudice,  philosophy  a  con- 
flict between  speculation  and  speculation,  and  politics,  where 
it  is  not  mere  bullying  and  thieving,  a  conflict  between  opin- 
ion and  opinion, —  instead  of  all  these  things  being  a  humble 
search  by  the  collective  mind  of  man  after  truth  and  justice. 
Two  thousand  years  ago  Socrates  preached  that  the  one 
important  thing  for  man  was  to  find  out  what  Justice  is, 
and  today  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  civilized  mankind  do 
not  know  that  he  preached  it,  and  but  few  of  the  hundredth 
part  have  engaged  in  the  search.  To  Stephen,  however,  the 
search  was  a  necessity  towards  which  his  whole  nature  im- 
pelled him.  Absolute  truth  was  so  essential  to  his  mind 


i72  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

that  when  he  first  came  into  contact  with  the  actual  thoughts 
and  affairs  of  men  through  the  medium  of  newspapers  (a 
literature  which  he  left  severely  alone  until  he  was  over 
eighteen  years  of  age),  he  was  astounded  to  find  what  small 
importance  was  attached  to  it.  The  actual  controversy 
which  was  agitating  the  Press  at  the  time  was  the  impending 
assault  by  the  Liberal  Government  of  England  on  the  House 
of  Lords.  The  battle  of  brains,  viewed  even  in  the  Irish 
Press  where  the  skirmishes  were  only  subsidiary,  was  so 
interesting  to  Stephen  that  he  sent  for  a  number  of  English 
papers  to  study  the  central  conflict.  As  a  spectacle  it  was 
exciting,  but  as  political  philosophy  it  was  a  lamentable  exhi- 
bition. False  premise  pitted  against  false  premise;  wrong 
deductions  founded  on  true  premises  pitted  against  logical 
deductions  from  false  premises;  meaningless  side  issues 
thrashed  to  death ;  petitio  principii  passing  as  unanswerable 
argument :  —  all  these  made  Stephen,  unused  to  the  facts  of 
the  game,  imagine  that  the  participants  were  battling  in  a 
mist  of  stupidity. 

"  Hang  it  all!  "  he  exclaimed  one  day  sitting  in  the  midst 
of  a  heap  of  crumpled  paper,  "  two  mutually  contradictory 
theories  cannot  both  be  true.  Why  can't  the  two  sides  real- 
ize this  and  instead  of  each  trying  to  force  its  view  on  the 
other  co-operate  in  an  effort  to  extract  the  truth?  Modern 
politics  seems  to  consist  entirely  in  bolstering  up  a  point  of 
view,  so  that  the  worse  system  of  government  may  be  in 
force  because  it  happens  to  have  the  cleverer  exponents.  We 
need  another  Socrates  to  walk  amongst  men  and  say  to  them : 
'  Let  us  seek  together  for  wrhat  is  justice  and  when  we  have 
found  it  let  us  rule  ourselves  accordingly.'  " 

The  suggestion  set  him  pondering  a  long  while  in  silence. 

2 

Stephen  is  not  to  be  pictured  as  a  pale,  thought-worn  stu- 
dent. The  free  mountain  air  he  breathed  would  be  suffi- 
cient guarantee  against  that,  and  moreover  he  worked  hard 
on  their  little  farm  and  he  was  a  tireless  walker  and  swim- 


STEPHEN  173 

mer.  He  grew  up  strong  and  active  and  of  fine  physique, 
devoted  to  the  open  air  life,  and  save  for  his  preference  for 
philosophic  reading  and  lack  of  desire  for  companionship  his 
boyhood  was  not  abnormal. 

When  we  last  saw  him  he  was  just  commencing  to  read 
the  History  of  the  Four  Masters,  being  then  twelves  years 
of  age.  It  took  him  four  months  in  his  methodical  way  to 
digest  that  treatise,  but  though  it  increased  his  knowledge 
of  facts  immensely  it  did  not  alter  the  simple  political  phi- 
losophy he  had  acquired  by  his  reading  of  one  very  small 
book  when  first  the  mysterious  cupboard  was  opened.  "  The 
English  have  conquered  us,"  he  had  said.  "  Therefore  they 
must  be  driven  out."  It  was  a  simple,  logical  sequence  and 
there  was  no  one  to  interpose  subtle  side  issues.  Not  that 
these  would  have  had  much  effect.  If  any  one  had  told  him, 
for  instance,  that  British  Rule  was  for  Ireland's  good  he 
would  simply  have  answered  that  he  didn't  want  to  have 
good  things  forced  on  him,  thank  you.  And  was  it  for  Ire- 
land's good,  anyway?  It  would  have  been  hard  to  prove 
this  thesis  to  him,  for  Stephen  could  not  be  impressed  by 
long  words  that  he  did  not  understand,  and  he  would  prob- 
ably fall  back  on  his  instinctive  feeling  that  servitude,  even 
if  it  were  beneficial,  was  degrading.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact 
such  argument  never  came  his  way. 

When  he  had  finished  the  Four  Masters  he  read  more  of 
the  books  from  the  one-time  mysterious  cupboard.  He  dis- 
covered early  that  his  father  was  disinclined  to  talk  with 
him  about  these  books  as  he  did  about  others,  but  he  failed 
to  elicit  any  explanation  of  the  fact.  Undeterred  by  this, 
however,  Stephen  read  all  the  books  in  the  cupboard,  and 
thereby  learned  the  whole  history  of  his  native  land,  with 
the  natural  and  logical  result  which  his  father  dreaded  but 
did  not  seek  to  prevent.  Had  these  books  been  kept  per- 
manently out  of  his  hands  Stephen  might  have  remained  all 
his  life  a  student  of  abstract  philosophy.  His  first  view  of 
modern  politics,  as  we  have  seen,  made  him  pity  mankind 
for  its  stupidity  and  contemplate  the  possibility  of  himself 


174  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

becoming  an  exponent  of  knowledge.  Further  exploration, 
however,  showed  him  that  what  he  had  taken  for  stupidity 
was  in  reality  dishonesty,  and  he  had  shrunk  from  participa- 
tion in  a  conflict  where  truth  was  not  merely  unrecognized 
but  unsought.  But  here  in  Ireland  he  now  saw  a  war  of 
reality:  right  struggling  heroically  against  might;  justice 
fighting  the  eternal  fight  with  injustice;  thought  wrestling 
with  the  strangling  grip  of  the  material;  the  light  of  truth 
stabbing  eternally  with  its  beams  the  overwhelming  darkness 
of  deceit.  His  gaze,  searching  infinity  for  abstract  justice, 
suddenly  focussed  upon  the  moment  of  the  eternal  drama 
being  enacted  in  one  insignificant  corner  of  the  universe. 
Here  was  the  birth  in  him  of  the  desire  to  do.  He  ascended 
the  hill  behind  the  house  and  looked  down  on  the  city  slum- 
bering, as  it  seemed,  at  the  edge  of  the  bay.  Often  in  his 
boyhood  he  had  asked  to  be  taken  to  the  city,  but  his  father, 
on  one  excuse  or  another,  had  always  refused.  Gradually 
the  requests  became  less  and  less  frequent,  and  finally  ceased. 
Now  the  desire  was  strong  upon  him  to  set  forth  at  once 
and  walk  among  men.  But  in  the  end  he  retraced  his  steps 
homeward. 

"  It  can  wait,"  he  muttered.  "  There's  still  a  lot  to 
learn." 

And  one  day  he  and  his  father  had  reason  to  visit  a  village 
down  in  the  plain.  When  they  arrived  there  they  found  it 
crowded  with  people  and  very  noisy.  There  were  drums 
beating  and  bugles  and  pipes  playing  and  green  flags  flying, 
and  there  were  some  men  bustling  around  in  dirty,  flashy 
uniforms  and  others  reeling  about  in  various  stages  of  in- 
toxication. They  came  to  a  platform  from  which  a  man, — 
a  fat,  prosperous,  dishonest  looking  creature  —  was  address- 
ing the  crowd. 

"  The  day  of  victory  is  approaching,"  he  was  saying. 
"  The  dark  clouds  are  being  dispersed  by  the  will  of  the 
people  constitutionally  spoken."  (Cheers.)  "  Let  cranks 
and  faction  mongers  croak  as  they  will,  the  dawn  was  never 
more  surely  at  hand.  Let  us  stick  by  the  old  flag.  The 


STEPHEN  175 

flag  of  Hugh  O'Neill,  and  Owen  Roe,  and  Tone  and 
Mitchell;  of  Parnell  and  John  Redmond."  (Cheers.) 
"  Only  let  us  remain  firm  and  united  and  loyal  to  our 
heaven-sent  leader"  (cheers),  "and  freedom  will  be  ours 
before  three  years  are  out."  (Tremendous  applause  and 
more  music.) 

"What's  all  this,  father?"  asked  Stephen. 

"  Politics,"  said  Michael  Ward. 

Which  confirmed  Stephen's  intention  of  biding  his  time. 

So  you  envisage  Stephen's  growth  from  boyhood  to  man- 
hood in  the  lonely  glen  in  the  Dublin  mountains,  jealously 
and  fearfully  watched  by  his  broken  father,  yet  developing 
in  his  own  way  for  all  that.  A  quiet,  regular  life  he  led, 
working  and  reading,  one  day  much  the  same  as  another, 
for  twenty-four  years.  And  you  may  picture  him  in  the 
full  flower  of  his  manhood  thus:  a  form  physically  perfect, 
of  medium  height,  broad  in  the  shoulders,  narrow  in  the 
loins,  long  in  the  limbs;  the  whple  surmounted  by  a  fine 
square-shaped  head,  with  a  crop  of  thick  black  hair;  the 
face  not  handsome,  but  clear-skinned,  with  high  cheek-bones, 
good-sized  nose,  bright  steel-blue  eyes,  and  a  long  upper  lip 
covering  a  set  of  powerful  white  teeth.  An  aboriginal  Celt, 
ethnologists  would  call  him,  but  ethnology  is  a  discredited 
pseudo-science. 

3 

The  clatter  of  galloping  hoofs  rang  out  on  the  hard  sun- 
baked road.  A  cry  of  fear  made  Stephen  halt.  In  the  next 
instant  a  pony  and  trap  enveloped  in  a  cloud  of  dust  hurtled 
into  sight  round  the  bend  of  the  road.  A  girl,  a  picture  of 
frantic  despair,  clung  with  all  the  relics  of  her  strength  to 
the  reins.  As  the  runaway  dashed  past  him  Stephen  sprang 
instantly  into  action.  With  a  nimble  leap  he  caught  the 
rein  by  the  bit  and  ran  alongside  the  pony,  gradually  check- 
ing him.  When  he  had  brought  him  to  a  halt  and  soothed 
him  down  he  turned  to  assist  the  girl  out  of  the  trap.  She 
was  breathing  hard  and  trembling.  He  led  her  to  the 
grassy  bank  by  the  roadside,  where  she  sat  down,  gave  a 


176  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

sigh  of  relief,  and  then  incontinently  broke  out  into  hys- 
terical sobs.  Stephen  was  at  a  loss  what  to  do.  He  was  the 
incompetent  male  at  a  crisis  like  this.  The  decision  and 
promptitude  of  action  that  had  controlled  the  runaway  horse 
were  useless  factors  now,  and  he  stood  by,  puzzled  and 
helpless,  while  the  fit  worked  itself  off. 

"  I'm  a  fool,"  she  said,  suddenly  recovering  herself. 
"  Thanks  for  your  help." 

He  felt  awkward,  reddened,  and  stammered  vaguely  for 
a  reply.  She  looked  up  at  him  for  a  moment  and  then 
quickly  looked  down  again.  Stephen  returned  to  the  pony 
and  stroked  its  damp  neck. 

"What  made  him  run  away?"  he  asked. 

"  He  took  fright  at  a  motor  char-a-banc  full  of  tourists, 
all  shouting  and  waving  flags." 

A  little  later  she  said: 

"  Would  you  mind  very  much  if  I  asked  you  to  drive  me 
home.  I'm  still  rather  shaken.  .  .  .  It's  only  about  a  mile 
away." 

Stephen  complied  at  once.  He  turned  the  trap  round, 
while  'she  watched  the  manly  strength  and  grace  of  his  figure 
with  admiring  eyes.  They  drove  along  the  dusty  road  un- 
der the  July  sun  in  silence,  until  at  last  they  reached  an 
open  gateway,  on  the  pillars  of  which  were  the  words: 
"  The  Beeches." 

"  Here  we  are,"  said  the  girl. 

Stephen  drove  up  a  short  gravelled  avenue  that  led  to  a 
moderate  sized  country  house.  A  boy  of  about  sixteen  years 
of  age  who  had  been  lounging  in  the  shade  of  the  verandah, 
jumped  up  at  sight  of  the  trap,  exclaiming: 

"  Hello !  Madge,  you're  back  early  .  .  ."  He  stopped 
as  he  caught  sight  of  Stephen. 

"  My  brother  Teddy,"  said  Madge  to  Stephen.  "  Teddy, 
this  is  Mr.  .  .  .,"  she  paused  inquiringly,  and  Stephen 
filled  in  the  blank. 

"  Tony  took  fright  at  a  char-a-banc  and  ran  away  with 


STEPHEN  177 

me,"  explained  Madge.  "  Only  for  Mr.  Ward  I'd  have 
had  a  spill." 

"  Come  inside  and  have  a  drink,"  said  Teddy. 

"  No,  thanks.  I  won't  trouble  you.  I  was  on  my  way 
to  Rathfarnham  and  this  has  really  been  a  lift  for  me." 

"  Oh,  come  on !  "  said  Teddy. 

"  Please  come  in,"  said  Madge. 

Stephen  yielded,  and  they  went  in  to  a  handsome  dining- 
room. 

"  Whiskey  or  lemon-squash?  "  asked  Teddy. 

Stephen  chose  the  latter. 

"  Father  and  mother  are  out  today,"  said  Madge  to 
Stephen.  "  Won't  you  call  in  another  time  and  meet 
them?" 

Stephen  said  he  would  be  delighted,  and  a  few  minutes 
later  announced  that  he  must  be  off.  Madge  saw  him  to 
the  gate. 

"  Good-bye,"  she  said,  giving  him  her  hand.  "  For  the 
present,"  she  added. 

He  resumed  his  way  to  Rathfarnham  and,  as  he  did  not 
look  back,  he  was  unaware  that  Madge  stood  at  the  gate 
looking  after  him  until  he  was  out  of  sight.  He  walked 
pensively,  with  his  head  down,  absorbed  in  meditation. 

"  What  did  that  strange  look  in  her  eyes  mean?  "  he  was 
asking  himself.  But  he  could  obtain  no  answer,  being  un- 
schooled in  romantic  fiction. 

One  afternoon  a  week  later  he  set  out  again  for  Rathfarn- 
ham. He  passed  the  scene  of  the  previous  week's  adven- 
ture and  came  at  last  to  the  low  wall  that  separated  the 
Conroy  grounds  (Conroy  was  Madge's  surname)  from  the 
road. 

"  Hello,  Mr.  Ward!  "  cried  a  voice. 

Stephen  looked  up  and  saw  Madge  swinging  in  a  ham- 
mock slung  between  two  cherry  trees.  He  was  hot  and 
dusty,  and  she  was  a  picture  of  cool  freshness  in  a  frock  of 
summery  white.  There  was  a  pink  flush  on  her  cheeks  but 


178  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Stephen  was  not  aware  that  he  was  the  cause  of  it.  He 
came  over  to  the  wall  and  looked  up  at  her,  leaning  his 
elbows  on  it. 

"  How  are  you  today?  "  he  said. 

"  Quite  recovered,  thanks,"  she  replied. 

Stephen,  having  no  more  to  say,  fidgetted  nervously  with 
the  moss  on  the  top  of  the  wall. 

"Won't  you  come  inside  and  talk  to  me?"  suggested 
Madge.  "  There's  another  hammock  over  there,"  indicating 
one  hanging  loose  by  one  end  from  the  bough  near  at  hand. 

"  I'm  afraid  I  haven't  time,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Oh !  "  she  said,  looking  very  disappointed. 

"  I  live  up  in  Glencoole,  you  know,"  he  explained,  "  and 
I'm  going  down  to  Rathfarnham  to  buy  some  things." 

"  That's  a  long  way  to  walk." 

"  Eight  miles.  .  .  .  Nothing  at  all." 

"  And  eight  back." 

"I'm  accustomed  to  it." 

"  But  wouldn't  you  like  a  rest?  " 

"  I  haven't  time  for  that." 

She  swallowed  her  disappointment  and  asked: 

"When  are  you  coming  to  see  us?  Mother  and  Father 
are  longing  to  thank  you  for  saving  me." 

"  It  was  nothing.     But  I'll  come  any  time  you  like." 

"  Let's  see.  .  .  .  Oh,  yes.  We're  having  a  little  garden 
party  on  Thursday  afternoon.  Could  you  come?  " 

"  Yes.     Thanks  very  much." 

"  Don't  forget  now.     Four  o'clock." 

"  I'll  remember.  .  .  .  Well,   good-bye.     I   must  go  on." 

He  made  his  purchases  in  Rathfarnham  and  started  back 
for  home  at  once.  Madge  was  in  the  hammock  again  when 
he  passed,  but  he  did  not  know  that  she  had  carefully  cal- 
culated the  probable  time  of  his  arrival  and  that  she  had 
been  waiting  for  him  for  three  quarters  of  an  hour  in  the 
chill  of  the  dusk-fall.  The  conversation  that  ensued  was 
short  and  disappointing  to  her,  and  she  was  mortified  to 
observe  that  the  young  man  showed  no  emotion  in  parting 


STEPHEN  179 

from  her  at  this  magic  flower-scented  hour,  and  that  he 
made  no  attempt  to  retain  the  hand  that  would  willingly 
have  lingered  in  his. 

Thursday  came,  and  Stephen  was  welcomed  at  the  gate 
by  Madge.  She  led  him  over  to  the  lawn  where,  under  the 
shade  of  a  couple  of  hawthorns,  Mrs.  Conroy  was  dispensing 
tea  to  her  guests.  Her  husband  lolled  in  a  deck  chair  chat- 
ting with  three  young  ladies  who  laughed  industriously  at 
regular  intervals.  Two  young  men  in  flannels  were  hand- 
ing round  tea  and  cake.  A  third,  little  more  than  a  boy, 
stood  apart  fidgetting  and  distraught,  gazing  at  Stephen  and 
his  conductress  as  they  drew  near.  A  game  of  tennis  was 
in  progress  on  the  court  just  beyond. 

"  Mother,  this  is  Mr.  Ward." 

Madge's  parents  greeted  Stephen  effusively.  Then  he 
was  introduced  all  round  and  set  in  a  deck  chair  with  a  cup 
of  tea  and  a  slice  of  cake  precariously  balanced  in  his  hand. 
He  felt  like  a  dark  spot  on  the  prevailing  whiteness,  for, 
though  he  had  spent  some  time  in  making  himself  spruce 
for  the  occasion,  he  was  the  only  male  present  who  was  not 
in  white  flannels,  and  all  the  ladies  were  in  the  daintiest 
summer  frocks. 

"  Madge  told  me  all  about  the  rescue,"  said  the  girl  sit- 
ting nearest  to  him.  "  How  on  earth  were  you  so  quick? 
I  can't  understand  it.  I'm  sure  I'd  have  been  out  of  my 
wits." 

"  Romantic,  wasn't  it?  "  observed  another  girl,  in  a  harsh 
and  rather  scornful  voice. 

Madge  brought  over  a  chair  and  planted  it  down  beside 
Stephen's.  The  youth  who  had  been  standing  apart  there- 
upon moved  round  unobtrusively  and  sat  on  the  grass  close 
at  hand.  He  kept  looking  anxiously  at  Stephen  and  Madge 
as  they  talked.  There  was  general  conversation  punc- 
tuated by  the  musical  clink  of  tea  cups  for  a  while.  Then 
the  tennis  players,  Teddy  among  them,  having  finished  their 
game,  strolled  up. 

"  Our  turn  now,"  said  one  of  the  girls. 


i8o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Do  you  play  tennis,  Mr.  Ward  ?  "  Madge  inquired. 
Stephen  shook  his  head. 

"  I've  never  had  a  racquet  in  my  hand,"  he  said. 

Madge  turned  to  the  melancholy  youth  on  the  grass. 

"  Mr.  Lascelles,"  she  said,  "  will  you  and  Miss  Ridley 
play  Fanny  and  George?  " 

"  I'm  not  in  very  good  form  today,"  the  young  man  de- 
murred. "  I've  got  a  stiff  wrist." 

"  Nonsense." 

"  Fact." 

"  Well,  will  you  make  the  fourth,"  she  asked  another 
young  man,  who  gladly  accepted.  The  four  moved  off  to 
the  tennis  court. 

"  Let's  go  and  look  on,"  said  Madge  to  Stephen  a  few 
minutes  later. 

"  Yes.  I've  never  seen  a  game  before,"  said  Stephen, 
and  they  set  off  after  the  players. 

The  young  man  called  Lascelles  stood  looking  after  them 
for  a  moment,  longing  and  yet  afraid  to  follow. 

"  He  won't  leave  me  for  a  minute,"  whispered  Madge 
to  Stephen.  "  I  hope  we've  shaken  him  off  now." 

"Who  is  he?" 

"  He's  a  school  friend  of  Teddy's.  They're  in  the  same 
class  at  Ashbury,  you  know.  Teddy  brought  him  to  see  us 
last  holidays  and  he  had  the  impudence  to  fall  in  love  with 
me.  He's  been  the  plague  of  my  life  ever  since." 

"  Love  is  a  queer  thing,"  said  Stephen  meditatively. 

Madge  looked  at  him  sideways,  seeking  to  divine  a  par- 
ticular meaning,  but  Stephen's  eyes  were  quite  impersonal. 
They  had  started  in  the  direction  of  the  tennis  court  but 
somehow  their  course  had  got  diverted  towards  a  shrubbery 
to  one  side  of  it. 

"  I  wonder  why  you  should  dislike  him  for  loving  you," 
said  Stephen.  "  But  I  don't  know  much  about  these  things. 
I've  lived  practically  alone  all  my  life." 

"  You  wouldn!f  dislike  some  one  for  loving  you,  then  ?  " 


STEPHEN  i$i 

"  I  don't  think  so.  But  then  I  don't  know.  No  one 
does,  anyhow." 

"  Somebody  might,  some  day." 

"  I'll  think  about  it  then.  What  did  you  say  that  boy's 
name  was?  " 

"  Lascelles  .  .  .  Eugene  Lascelles.  Rather  a  mouthful, 
isn't  it?  Like  the  hero  of  a  novel.  .  .  .  He  won't  be  the 
hero  of  mine  though." 

"  I've  never  read  any  novels." 

"  Really?  Well,  I  don't  read  much  myself.  Books  are 
such  dull  things.  .  .  .  But  you're  so  clever  looking  I  was 
sure  you'd  be  a  tremendous  reader.  I  declare,  I'm  quite 
relieved  to  find  you  aren't." 

"  You  mistake  me.  I  do  read.  But  not  novels.  History 
and  philosophy  and  that  sort  of  thing,  you  know." 

"  I  know.  Of  course  that's  what  one  really  means  by 
reading.  That's  what  I'd  like  to  read  if  I  could,  but  I'm 
a  wee  bit  afraid  that  perhaps  I'm  not  clever  enough."  t." 

"  Nonsense.  If  you've  got  enough  intelligence  to  like  that 
sort  of  thing,  you've  enough  to  understand  it." 

"  I  do  hope  so.     That's  very  encouraging." 

After  a  pause  Stephen  said :  "  Will  you  and  Teddy  drive 
over  to  Glencoole  some  day?  It's  a  lonely  spot,  but  it's 
very  beautiful.  I  could  show  you  some  of  my  books  if  you 
like." 

"  I  should  love  to,"  said  Madge. 

"  Now,  let's  have  a  look  at  this  tennis,"  said  Stephen. 
"  I'd  like  to  learn  it." 

The  party  came  to  an  end.  To  Madge's  feeling  the 
lengthening  shadows  of  the  evening  were  not  colder  than 
Stephen's  farewell. 

4 

On  a  pleasant  afternoon  a  fortnight  later  Madge  and 
Teddy  drove  over  to  Glencoole. 

"  I  suppose  I'll  have  to  be  tactful  and  keep  in  the  back- 
ground," said  Teddy  as  they  neared  the  Wards'  cottage. 


182  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Silly!  "  said  Madge,  with  a  blush. 

Stephen  and  his  father  met  them  outside  the  gate  and  they 
had  a  somewhat  sedate  tea  in  the  cool  of  the  sitting-cum- 
dining-room.  Teddy  told  inconsecutive  anecdotes  about 
tennis  and  cricket  and  Ashbury  and  Lascelles  and  a  terrible 
ass  called  O'Dwyer,  a  friend  of  the  latter;  and  Madge  made 
complimentary  remarks  about  the  weather  and  the  road  and 
the  garden  and  the  tea. 

"  And  oh!  "  she  exclaimed,  "  your  books!     How  lovely!  " 

She  insisted  on  going  round  the  shelves  and  reading  out  the 
titles  of  the  books,  just  as  if  she  were  well  acquainted  with 
them. 

"  I  never  knew  you  were  a  book-worm,  Madge,"  said 
Teddy. 

"  Oh,  Teddy !  How  could  you !  "  said  the  deceiver  re- 
proachfully. 

Stephen  rose  and  followed  her  to  the  book  case.  He  took 
down  some  of  his  favourite  volumes  for  her  inspection, 
fondling  them  while  he  did  so  as  a  book  lover  does. 

"Lovely!  .  .  .  beautiful!  .  .  .  how  interesting!"  Madge 
kept  exclaiming. 

"  The  Wisdom  of  the  world  is  in  this,"  said  Stephen,  tak- 
ing down  Plato's  Republic. 

"  How  nice,"  said  Madge. 

Stephen  fetched  down  a  fine  edition  of  Shakespeare. 

"  The  only  poet  I  care  about,"  he  said. 

"  I  don't  like  poetry  either,"  said  Madge. 

"  Most  poets,"  went  on  Stephen,  "  seem  to  be  so  pre- 
occupied with  their  own  moods  and  emotions.  Shake- 
speare's so  different.  He's  the  essence  of  humanity  and  the 
storehouse  of  wisdom.  .  .  .  Don't  you  think  so?"  he  in- 
quired, turning  to  where  Teddy  still  lounged  in  his  chair. 

"  Well,  personally  I  think  Shakespeare's  an  awful  ass," 
replied  Teddy. 

"  Oh,  Teddy,"  remonstrated  Madge,  "  I  think  Shake- 
speare's frightfully  nice,"  she  put  in  for  Stephen's  benefit. 

"  Have  a  cigarette?  "  said  Teddy,  offering  his  silver  case. 


STEPHEN  183 

"  No,  thanks.     I  don't  smoke,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Heart?  "  inquired  Teddy. 

"  No.  I  want  to  have  a  minimum  of  things  I  can't  do 
without." 

Teddy's  face  expressed  pitying  scorn.  A  person  who 
didn't  play  tennis  or  cricket,  didn't  smoke,  and  enjoyed 
Shakespeare,  was  something  less  than  half  a  man  in  his 
estimation. 

Stephen  suggested  a  walk  down  the  glen,  and  the  three  of 
them  set  out.  When  he  was  not  pointing  out  some  view  or 
object  of  interest  Stephen  talked  philosophy  and  theology 
at  Madge,  which  she  punctuated  with  her  ever-recurring 
exclamations,  while  Teddy  walked  beside  them  in  silent  bore- 
dom and  disgust. 

"  I  say,  I  think  Ward's  an  awful  ass,"  said  Teddy,  in  the 
trap  on  the  way  home.  "  I  was  fairly  bored  stiff." 

"  I  wasn't,"  said  Madge. 

Teddy  stared  hard  at  her. 

"  I  do  believe  you're  gone  on  him,"  he  said. 

At  the  same  time  Michael  Ward  was  saying  to  his  son: 

"  Stephen,  I'm  afraid  that  girl  is  fond  of  you." 

"  Rubbish,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Nothing  of  the  kind,"  declared  his  father. 

"  I'm  not  fond  of  her  anyway,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Well,  take  care  what  you  do." 

"  I  did.  I  talked  philosophy  at  her  the  whole  after- 
noon." 

"  Not  much  use,  I'm  afraid.  Women  are  queer  crea- 
tures." 

"Fools,"  said  Stephen. 

"  I'm  afraid  you're  heartless,"  said  his  father. 

"  I  hope  so,"  said  Stephen. 

"  That  shows  your  ignorance  then." 

"  Good-night,"  said  Stephen. 


1 84  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

5 

"  So  the  leader  of  the  Irish  race  at  home  and  abroad  has 
agreed  to  accept  a  little  emasculated  parliament  house  as  a 
final  settlement?" 

It  was  Stephen  who  spoke.  He  and  his  father  were  just 
finishing  breakfast. 

"What  does  it  matter?"  said  Michael  Ward  carelessly. 

"Matter!"  exclaimed  Stephen.  "It's  wrong!  It's  il- 
logical! It's  damnable!  How  can  we  logically  or  honestly 
accept  a  Home  Rule  Bill  framed  by  England?  Isn't  our 
whole  case  based  on  the  fact  that  England  has  no  right  to 
legislate  for  us  at  all?  " 

"  There's  no  logic  in  politics,  Stephen.  Logically  we 
shouldn't  send  members  to  London  at  all,  but  what  do  peo- 
ple care  about  logic?  I  gave  up  all  interest  in  politics  years 
ago  and  I'd  advise  you  to  do  the  same." 

"  And  assist  British  rule  by  my  acquiescence.  No, 
thanks." 

"  To  try  and  overthrow  British  rule  in  this  country  is  to 
attempt  the  impossible." 

"  I. don't  admit  such  an  impossibility." 

"  I'm  talking  from  experience.  In  my  time  I  tried  and 
failed." 

"You  tried?" 

"  Yes.  I  never  told  you  anything  about  it  because  I 
hoped  you'd  never  interest  yourself  in  this  unfortunate 
country's  affairs.  Well,  I'll  tell  you  the  whole  story  now, 
and  let  it  be  a  warning  to  you." 

Michael  Ward  re-told  the  tale  with  which  the  reader  is 
already  acquainted.  When  he  had  finished  Stephen  said: 

"  Very  well.  You  tried  and  failed.  I  must  find  a  better 
way,  that's  all." 

"  Stephen,"  said  the  father,  "  do  nothing  hasty.  For  all 
you  know  Home  Rule  may  be  better  for  Ireland  than  In- 
dependence." 

"  That's  a  matter  for  discussion  among  Irishmen,"  replied 
Stephen.  "  It's  no  concern  of  England's.  All  we  want  of 


STEPHEN  185 

her  is  the  simple  requirement  of  justice  —  withdrawal  from 
our  country  bag  and  baggage.  Then  we  can  decide  for  our- 
selves whether  we  want  a  partnership  with  her  or  not." 

"  You  needn't  expect  justice  from  England." 

"  I'm  quite  aware  of  that.  It's  no  argument  for  accept- 
ing half  measures.  By  right  and  justice  we  claim  independ- 
ence. All  that  remains  to  be  done  is  to  devise  a  method  of 
securing  it.  Force  has  failed:  compromise  is  illogical,  dis- 
honest, and  I  believe  will  also  fail.  There  must  be  another 
way  and  I'll  find  it  if  I  have  to  spend  my  life  in  the  search- 
ing." 

This  prospect  of  a  long  wait  reassured  the  father  that  his 
son  would  do  nothing  rash.  Indeed,  so  convinced  was  he 
of  the  impossibility  of  solving  the  problem  that  he  felt  satis- 
fied that  "  nothing  rash  "  really  meant  "  nothing." 

"  My  dear  boy,"  he  said,  filling  his  pipe  as  he  spoke,  "  to 
the  truly  philosophical  mind  the  ephemeral  affairs  of  men 
are  not  worthy  of  prolonged  consideration.  Do  you  see 
that  apple  on  the  plate  there?  Science  tells  us  that  it  is 
divided  into  an  enormous  number  of  infinitesimal  molecules 
all  in  perpetual  motion,  and  that  the  very  molecules  are 
divided  into  still  tinier  atoms.  Yet  we  see  nothing  but  a 
quiet,  rotund  solidity.  Now  consider  the  universe  in  which 
we  live.  Our  earth  is  but  an  atom  of  the  molecule  called 
the  solar  system,  and  that  molecule  is  but  one  of  the  millions 
that  compose  the  universe.  Look  at  that  aipple  again. 
Wonderful  happenings  may  be  in  progress  in  one  of  its 
atoms  but  of  what  ultimate  import  are  they?  Similarly  I 
can  imagine  a  gigantic  being  contemplating  our  universe 
which  he  sees  as  small  and  as  solid  as  we  see  the  apple,  and 
amusing  himself  by  wondering  whether  things  could  really 
happen  in  one  of  its  atoms.  How  small  it  all  is  really." 

"  That's  a  very  pretty  thesis,"  replied  Stephen.  "  I'd 
often  thought  of  it  myself.  But,  my  dear  father,  you 
mustn't  let  yourself  be  carried  away  by  relativity  of  size. 
To  regard  size  and  importance  as  synonymous  is  the  most 
revolting  kind  of  snobbery.  I've  come  to  look  at  everything 


1 86  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

from  the  absolute  point  of  view  in  regard  to  size  and  the 
intrinsic  point  of  view  in  regard  to  value.  That  match 
you're  going  to  light  your  pipe  with  is  a  small  thing  com- 
pared with  .  .  .  say  Jupiter ;  but  it  has  a  definite  size.  And 
if  you  compare  both  with  the  vastness  of  infinite  space  the 
difference  between  them  is  very  slight.  Then  the  match 
has  an  intrinsic  value  of  its  own.  It's  complete  in  itself  and 
perfect  to  its  own  end.  .  .  .  You  couldn't  light  your  pipe 
with  Jupiter.  ...  If,  then,  the  match  is  absolutely  im- 
portant, how  very  much  more  so  is  man,  who,  small  as  he 
is,  has  an  immortal  soul  and  carries  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
within  him." 

"  That's  right,  Stephen.  Stick  to  philosophy  and  leave 
politics  alone." 

"  They're  all  one  to  me,"  said  Stephen.  "  The  battle  be- 
tween right  and  wrong,  truth  and  falsehood  is  going  on 
everywhere:  here  in  Ireland,  billions  of  miles  away  in  some 
planet  revolving  round  Alpha  Centauri,  and  away  in  some 
corner  of  space  invisible  from  the  most  distant  star  we  can 
see.  And  I  want  to  be  on  the  right  side." 

"  How  are  the  potatoes  doing?  "  asked  Michael  Ward. 


Life  pursued  its  even  course  at  Glencoole  for  more  than  a 
year.  Then  one  morning  at  breakfast  Stephen  read  out 
from  the  newspaper  the  account  of  the  formation  of  the 
Ulster  Volunteers. 

"  That  settles  it,"  he  said.  "  There'll  be  no  Home  Rule 
now,  thank  heaven.  It's  just  the  excuse  England  was  look- 
ing for." 

He  read  silently  for  a  few  moments,  then  dropped  the 
paper  and  sat  wrapped  in  thought  for  a  while. 

"  I  have  an  idea,"  he  cried  suddenly. 

"  What  is  it?  "  asked  his  father. 

"I  must 'think  it  out,"  replied  Stephen,  and  became  si- 
lent. 


STEPHEN  187 

7 

"  This  strike,"  said  Stephen  some  months  later,  "  brings 
us  to  realities  at  last." 

Michael  Ward  grunted.  Even  in  his  youthful  days  he 
had  been  a  re-actionary  on  social  questions,  not  so  much 
from  conviction  as  from  the  old  Fenian  desire  to  demonstrate 
a  purely  spiritual  Nationalism  uncontaminated  by  material 
aspirations. 

"  And  oh !  "  said  Stephen,  "  the  mess  they're  making  of 
it!  The  hopeless  muddle  and  mess!  No  controversy  even, 
much  less  any  attempt  to  get  at  the  truth.  Mere  vitupera- 
tion and  mud  slinging.  Why  amn't  I  there?  " 

"  You're  better  where  you  are,"  said  his  father,  and  there 
was  an  anxious  note  in  his  voice. 

"  Shall  I  sit  quiet  while  my  fellow  men  fall?  ...  I 
know  what  should  be  done  ...  I  have  things  to  say  that 
are  worth  saying.  .  .  .  The  question  is,  is  society  to  be  a 
chaos  of  righting  animals,  each  getting  what  he  can  for  him- 
self, or  is  it  to  be  a  commonwealth  of  civilized  beings  where 
all  co-operate  to  make  the  world  as  fine  a  place  as  possible  ?  " 

"You'll  find  that  these  labour  people  are  just  out  for 
themselves." 

"  No  wonder,  under  existing  conditions.  In  that  they're 
the  same  as  every  other  class.  But  for  all  that  the  founda- 
tions of  the  better  system  are  in  them.  .  .  .  I'm  going  to 
Dublin,  father." 

"  My  boy  .  .  ."  exclaimed  Ward.  There  was  anguish 
in  his  tone. 

"  I  must,"  said  Stephen.  "  I've  things  to  say  and  do 
...  in  this  question  and  others.  .  .  .  They're  all  one,  re- 
member." 

"  Stephen,  if  you  really  must  go  I  suppose  you  must. 
.  .  .  You'-e  a  man  now,  and  I've  no  right  to  stop  you. 
.  .  .  But  think  first  what  you're  going  to  do.  ...  You're 
my  only  son.  ...  All  I  have  to  care  for,  and  I've  had  a 
hard  life,  laddie  ...  a  lonely  life.  If  anything  happened 
to  you  .  .  ," 


1 88  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Nothing  can  happen,  father.  I'm  not  a  hot  headed 
young  fool.  I've  never  done  anything  I  didn't  think  out 
first,  and  I  never  will." 

"  And  how  are  you  going  to  live,  Stephen  ?  I  can  allow 
you  a  little  money,  but  it  won't  go  far  in  a  big  city." 

"  We're  told  not  to  be  over  anxious  as  to  what  we  shall 
eat  and  wherewith  we  shall  be  clothed,  aren't  we?  ... 
Trust  me  to  find  enough  to  live  on  anyway." 

The  next  couple  of  days  were  spent  in  preparation  for 
Stephen's  departure.  His  more  bulky  luggage  —  and  even 
that  was  but  some  clothing  in  a  parcel  —  was  sent  by  post 
to  a  small  hotel  on  the  north  side  of  Dublin  owned  by  one, 
Doran,  a  friend  of  Ward's  of  days  gone  by ;  and  at  last  with 
a  satchel  on  his  back  and  fifty  pounds  in  his  pocket  Stephen 
said  good-bye  to  his  father  at  the  end  of  the  glen.  Michael 
Ward  looked  older  and  more  haggard  than  ever. 

"  I  can  hardly  bring  myself  to  let  you  go,  Stephen,"  he 
said.  "  You're  going  off  full  of  hope  and  vigour  ...  to 
waste  yourself  and  break  yourself  in  a  useless  struggle  for  an 
ungrateful  people.  .  .  .  My  boy,  when  you're  tired  and 
worn  out  won't  you  come  back  to  your  old  father  and  rest?  " 

Stephen  laughed  lightly. 

"  I'll  come  back  often,"  he  said.  "  And  pretty  soon  too. 
There's  no  need  to  be  tragic." 

"  Well,  good-bye,  my  boy.     Write  soon." 

"  Of  course.     This  very  night." 

They  shook  hands,  and  Stephen  went  down  the  road  to- 
wards the  city.  It  was  the  afternoon  of  Saturday  the  3Oth 
of  August,  1913. 

An  hour's  walk  brought  him  to  "  The  Beeches,"  where, 
over  the  low  wall,  he  could  see  Madge  and  a  young  man 
swinging  in  hammocks  close  together. 

"  How  are  you,  Miss  Conroy?  "  he  called. 

"  Hello,  Mr.  Ward,"  she  replied.  "  I  haven't  seen  you 
for  ages.  Where  are  you  off  to?  " 

"  Dublin,"  said  Stephen.     "  Good-bye." 

"  Good-bye  :  .  .  and  good  luck." 


STEPHEN  189 

"  Who's  that,  dear  ? "  inquired  the  young  man,  after 
Stephen's  departure. 

"  Oh,  a  terrible  bore  who  lives  up  the  mountains.  ...  I 
only  know  him  slightly." 

"  He  looks  rather  a  rustic  idiot,"  said  the  young  man. 

"  He  is,"  said  Madge. 

Stephen  walked  on  to  Rathfarnham,  where  he  took  the 
tram  to  the  city. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A   DEAD   HAND 


MRS.  GUNBY  ROURKE  gave  a  summer  dance  at  her 
house  at  Dundrum.  The  great  drawing-room  was 
beautifully  arranged  for  the  occasion.  Graceful  palms  and 
green  and  white  decorations  gave  a  cool  appearance  to  the 
eye  and  electric  fans  kept  the  atmosphere  pleasant.  The 
glass  doors  at  one  end  of  the  room  opened  on  to  the  garden, 
where  the  dancers  could  come  out  and  refresh  themselves  in 
the  balmy  night  air.  At  a  table  in  a  rose  bower  a  couple 
of  bored  but  ever  polite  servitors  dispensed  drink  and  ices 
to  all  who  sought  them. 

Bernard  and  his  pretty  partner  emerged  from  the  ball- 
room, the  girl  fanning  herself  vigorously. 

"Will  you  have  some  refreshment?"  inquired  Bernard, 
conventionally  solicitous. 

"  Please  ...  I  think  I'll  have  an  ice." 

They  approached  the  bower  and  Bernard  asked  for  their 
requirements. 

"  I'm  sorry,  sir,"  said  the  butler  humbly.  "  No  ices  left, 
sir  ...  Short,  sir  ...  The  Strike,  sir  ...  Lemonade, 
sir  ?  or  claret  cup  ?  " 

"  Those  awful  strikers !  "  said  the  girl,  sipping  claret  cup. 
"Why  can't  they  be  sensible?" 

"  That's  what  they  are,"  said  Bernard. 

"  But  they're  so  discontented.  .  .  .  Always  wanting 
something  more.  Give  them  all  they  ask  now,  and  they'll 
ask  twice  as  much  next  year.  .  .  .  The  world  was  such  a 
pleasant  place  until  all  this  trouble  arose.  .  .  .  I'm  sure  / 
don't  want  to  change  a  bit  of  it." 

A  year  ago  Bernard  would  have  hated  her  for  the 

100 


A  DEAD  HAND  191 

ness  of  her  mind  but  he  was  growing  more  tolerant  nowa- 
days. Hers  was  but  one  of  many  types  of  mind,  all  hu- 
man. Surely,  he  reflected,  it  had  its  own  merits, —  merits 
of  which,  perhaps,  superior  minds  were  destitute. 

He  brought  her  to  a  seat  in  a  secluded  corner  of  the  gar- 
den. She  babbled  on  about  "  those  horrid  strikers  "  for  a 
while  and  then  broke  off  to  say : 

"  What  a  lovely  night !  " 

She  was  sane  and  stupid  and  kindly  and  pleasure-loving. 
She  was  human.  That  love  of  humanity  which  is  funda- 
mental in  every  revolutionary  thinker,  even  though  he  know 
it  not,  suddenly  welled  up  in  Bernard's  heart.  He  loved  the 
silly  lovable  humanity  in  her,  and  moved  by  a  sudden  im- 
pulse he  put  his  arms  around  her  and  kissed  her. 

She  thought  it  was  an  ordinary  ballroom  kiss  and  said: 

"Oh,  Mr.  Lascelles!" 

"  I'm  sorry,"  he  said,  recovering  himself. 

"  Oh,  don't  mind,"  she  said.  "  You  can  do  it  again  if 
you  like." 

And  he  did. 

After  the  sun  had  risen  they  were  still  dancing. 


Through  sordid  lanes  and  decayed  old  streets  Bernard  and 
Crowley  followed  their  weary  little  guide.  It  was  night, 
but  they  were  bent  on  a  different  errand  from  that  which 
we  last  described.  Crowley  carried  a  bag.  They  were 
passing  through  slums  that  had  been  aristocratic  quarters  in 
the  days  of  Ireland's  prosperity.  Every  doorway  they  passed 
was  a  thing  of  battered  beauty;  the  rusted  and  broken  area 
railings  showed  the  craftsmanship  of  a  bygone  age;  and  one 
might  fancy  that  the  thin  wisp  of  smoke  eddying  round  one 
of  those  chimneys  was  the  product  of  the  combustion  of 
some  carved  oak  panel. 

"  Epitome  of  our  history,"  said  Crowley.  "  My  God, 
what  waste!  " 

.B.ejna^d  looked  at  him,  a  .little  surprised. at.his  tone.    Was 


i92  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

this  the  Crowley  he  knew, —  the  Crowley  of  the  Common 
Rooms  and  the  Billiard  Saloons? 

"  The  pity  of  it!  "  went  on  Crowley.  "  The  wasted  en- 
deavour of  the  days  of  hope!  It  would  have  been  better 
if  we  had  never  succeeded  at  all.  It  would  have  meant  less 
wreckage." 

Bernard  made  no  answer,  for  he  was  not  sure  what  Crow- 
ley  was  talking  about. 

"  Dublin,"  said  Crowley,  "  is  a  city  of  blighted  beginnings. 
Look  at  the  Bank  of  Ireland,  built  to  house  an  independent 
parliament,  and  not  yet  completed  when  the  parliament 
was  taken  from  us.  Look  at  our  Custom  House,  built  in 
the  days  when  we  had  control  of  our  own  revenue,  and  its 
function  taken  from  it  within  a  few  short  years.  Look  at 
Sackville  Street,  the  commencement  of  a  great  town  plan- 
ning scheme  that  we  haven't  been  allowed  to  continue.  .  .  . 
Rule,  Britannia,  and  God  save  our  noble  King!  " 

The  bitterness  in  his  tone  as  he  made  this  last  exclama- 
tion astonished  Bernard.  Could  the  Crowley  who  thought 
like  this,  he  asked  himself,  talk  like  the  other  Crowley? 
They  walked  for  a  while  in  silence,  and  then  Bernard 
spoke. 

"  I'm  afraid  things  are  going  hard  with  the  strikers.  It 
looks  as  if  the  employers  were  going  to  win." 

"  I'm  afraid  you're  right,"  said  Crowley.  "  Damnation 
on  it !  What's  wrong  with  the  world  at  all  that  the  right  is 
always  beaten  ?  " 

They  turned  down  a  narrow  and  filthy  court  through  an 
archway  under  one  of  the  tumbledown  mansions  of  the  main 
street.  It  was  a  hot  summer  night  and  the  air  here  was 
stifling  and  fetid.  They  trudged  on  past  many  open  doors 
each  of  which  gave  forth  a  new  and  viler  stench.  The  road- 
way was  pitted  and  rutted,  and  littered  with  rubbish.  Foul 
heaps  of  sweepings  occurred  haphazard.  Buckets  of  horror 
stood  on  the  pathway  outside  some  of  the  doors;  dirt  was 
piled  on  the  steps  of  others. 

"  I  was  at  a  dance  the  other  night,"  said  Bernard,  "  and 


A  DEAD  HAND  193 

one  of  my  partners  said  she  was  quite  satisfied  with  the 
world  as  it  is  and  wouldn't  change  a  bit  of  it." 

"  '  Uncertain,  coy  and  hard  to  please,'  "  said  Crowley  with 
a  sniff. 

"  Here  y'are,  docther,"  said  the  little  boy  who  was  their 
guide,  stopping  before  a  crazy  door  held  together  with 
packing-case  battens.  A  dirty,  towselled  little  girl  with 
nothing  on  but  a  tattered  pinafore  that  had  once  been  white 
answered  his  knock. 

"  This  way,  docther,"  she  whispered,  preceding  them  up 
a  stairway,  her  bare  feet  pat-patting  on  the  boards.  This 
was  not  a  decayed  mansion  but  a  modern  jerry  built  house, 
and  the  stairs,  as  far  as  one  could  see  in  the  darkness  and 
through  their  own  grime,  were  of  plain  deal,  warped  and 
ricketty.  So  were  the  banisters,  which  had  been  cut  away 
in  places,  probably  for  firewood.  They  passed  a  landing 
and  went  up  another  flight  of  stairs  even  dirtier  than  the  first. 
On  the  next  landing  the  little  girl  opened  a  door  and  beck- 
oned to  the  two  students  to  enter. 

The  room  was  twilit  by  the  flicker  of  half  an  inch  of 
candle  stuck  in  a  porter  bottle  on  the  window  ledge.  The 
first  thing  that  caught  Bernard's  eye  on  entering  was  the  fig- 
ure of  a  man  lying  on  the  floor  dead  drunk  and  snoring  in 
the  corner  opposite  the  door.  The  walls  of  the  room  were 
covered  with  a  dirty  wall  paper  of  indeterminate  pattern 
which  was  peeling  off  everywhere  in  large  patches.  The 
ceiling  was  black  save  where  more  recent  flaking  off  of  the 
plaster  had  left  white  splotches.  The  bare  floor  was  black 
with  dirt  and  littered  with  rubbish.  Some  half-washed  tat- 
tered garments  hung  across  the  room  on  a  string,  intercept- 
ing what  little  air  came  through  the  window,  one  of  whose 
broken  panes  was  stuffed  with  rags  and  another  with  a  piece 
of  cardboard.  About  half  the  floor  space  was  occupied  by 
the  bed,  where  amid  a  heap  of  torn  and  filthy  bedclothes 
lay  the  prospective  mother.  Leaning  over  her  and  com- 
forting her  were  four  women  of  the  neighbourhood.  A 
little  boy  and  girl  aged  two  and  three  sat  up  among  the 


i94  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

blankets  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  wide-eyed  and  expectant. 

The  entry  of  the  two  students  was  the  signal  for  instant 
commotion.  The  four  women  came  bustling  forward  with 
offers  of  assistance,  but  Crowley  quickly  sent  them  pack- 
ing. 

"  One's  enough,"  he  said.  Then  to  the  cleanest,  a  fat 
matron  of  about  fifty,  "  You  stay,  ma'am.  The  rest  of  you 
can  clear  out,  every  one  of  you." 

He  drove  them  expostulating  to  the  door  as  one  would  a 
flock  of  hens. 

"  Some  hot  water,  please,"  he  said  to  the  woman  who 
remained,  and  she  went  away  and  presently  fetched  some  in 
a  dirty  chipped  enamel  basin.  A  petticoat  was  torn  down 
from  the  clothes  line  for  him  to  wipe  his  hands  on. 

A  ramshackle  chair  and  two  packing-cases  were  the  sole 
furniture  of  the  room.  The  little  girl  came  forward  to  offer 
the  chair  to  the  doctor,  dusting  the  broken  seat  of  it  with 
the  hem  of  her  pinafore.  Cats  could  be  heard  squalling 
on  the  roofs.  Somewhere  a  clock  chimed  the  quarter. 
The  woman  and  the  two  young  men  sat  down  to  await  the 
birth  of  one  of  the  heirs  of  the  ages. 

3 

"  Look  here,  Eugene,"  said  Bernard,  "  you've  been  moping 
too  much  lately.  It's  bad  for  you.  What's  it  all  about  ?  " 

Eugene  smiled  wanly. 

"  Nothing,"  he  said. 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  you're  still  sighing  for  Madge? 
.  .  .  You  are.  ...  I  say,  you  know,  this  is  absurd.  '  If 
of  herself  she  will  not  love,  Nothing  can  make  her,  The 
Devil  take  her.'  There  are  other  fish  in  the  sea." 

"  That's  no  consolation  when  you  only  want  the  one." 

"  Oh,  this  is  insanity.  What's  a  girl  ?  A  human  female. 
None  of  them  is  very  much  better  than  any  other.  They 
eat,  drink,  talk  and  think  very  much  like  ourselves  —  not 
quite  so  well  as  a  matter  of  fact.  .  .  ,  Shut  your  eyes,  take 


A  DEAD  HAND  195 

a  deep  breath,  and  forget  her.  I've  often  cured  myself  that 
way." 

"What  do  you  know  about  love?"  said  Eugene.  "A 
fickle  philanderer  like  you.  .  .  .  How  is  it  that  you  can  be 
so  constant  to  principles  and  so  changeable  towards  women  ?  " 

"  As  my  friend  Crowley  says,  we're  all  mixed  and 
streaked.  What  would  life  be  without  inconsistency? 
You're  a  damned  faithful  lover,  Eugene,  but  you're  in- 
fernally self-satisfied." 

"  I'm  not  ...  I  know  quite  well  I'm  unworthy  of  her." 

"  You're  wrong  there,  my  boy.  .  .  .  But  you're  self- 
satisfied  for  all  that.  ...  I  know  you'll  deny  it,  for  you 
couldn't  be  self-satisfied  knowingly.  .  .  .  Look  here,  this 
love  sickness  is  absurd.  Love's  too  trivial  a  thing  for  a 
man's  total  outlook.  The  world's  before  you,  you  know,  so 
shake  it  off.  Get  your  togs  and  we'll  buzz  over  to  the 
tennis  club." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Eugene  listlessly,  but  he  complied  with 
the  request. 

They  went  on  the  top  of  a  tram  to  the  grounds  of  the 
Baggotrath  Tennis  Club,  and  all  the  time  Bernard  lectured 
his  brother. 

"Love,"  he  said.  "What's  love?  Poets  rave  about  the 
beauty  and  the  wonder  of  it  as  they  rave  about  the  songs  of 
birds  and  the  scent  of  flowers,  and  yet  all  of  them  are  merely 
physiological  incidents  in  the  phenomenon  of  procreation." 

Eugene  blushed. 

"  Bernard,  you're  almost  Rabelaisian,"  he  said. 

"What?     Have  you  read  Rabelais?" 

"  Not  likely." 

"  Then  why  take  his  name  in  vain?  " 

"  I  know  what  he's  like." 

"  I  suppose  you  were  told  by  some  one  who  hadn't  read 
him  either." 

"  He's  on  the  index  as  an  immoral  writer." 

"That   word    'immoral'!"    exclaimed    Bernard.     "I'd 


ig6  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

like  to  cut  it  out  of  the  dictionary.  It  means  too  many 
things  for  you  people  who  think  loosely.  Rabelais  may  be 
dirty,  but  he's  a  sight  less  demoralizing  than  hundreds  of 
books  that  aren't  on  the  index.  ...  I  suppose  you  wouldn't 
dream  of  reading  Ghosts  or  Widowers'  Houses?  " 

"  Certainly." 

"Well,  why  would  you  read  Macbeth  or  Coriolanus? 
They  deal  with  Murder  and  Treason.  Isn't  that  just  as 
immoral  as  unchastity  and  harlotry?" 

Eugene  shuddered  at  the  mention  of  the  last  two  words. 

"  I  don't  like  to  discuss  this  kind  of  subject,"  he  said. 

"  Funk!  "  said  Bernard.  "  I'd  just  like  to  tell  our  theo- 
logians what  I  think  of  their  attitude  to  sins  of  the  senses. 
They  aren't  the  worst  sins  by  long  chalks.  I  can  always 
find  some  excuse  for  an  adulterer,  but  none  for  the  oppressor 
of  the  poor.  Christ  himself  was  lenient  to  the  sinful  woman, 
but  he  had  nothing  but  anger  for  the  Pharisees  and  money- 
changers." 

"  You  do  mix  up  religion  and  indecency !  "  said  Eugene. 
"  Let's  talk  of  something  else,  for  heaven's  sake." 

They  played  tennis  throughout  the  afternoon,  and  there 
was  an  interval  at  half-past  five  for  tea  in  the  club  house. 
The  elegant  Molloy  was  there,  a  picture  of  lounging  pros- 
perity. Naturally  execration  of  the  strikers  formed  a  large 
part  of  the  conversation. 

"  Personally,"  said  Molloy,  "  I'm  doing  rather  well  out 
of  the  situation.  You  see,  these  fellows  who  have  been  ar- 
rested aren't  well  off  and  can't  afford  to  go  to  the  big  men 
in  the  profession.  That  gives  us  beginners  a  chance.  .  .  . 
Of  course  they're  rather  a  low  type  of  client,  but  so  long  as 
they  pay  I  don't  mind." 

"  By  jove,"  said  Bernard,  "  that's  damn  decent  of  you." 

"  My  brother's  a  socialist,"  said  Sandy,  whom  Bernard 
had  not  noticed  before. 

"I  say!  .  .  .  Not  really?"  exclaimed  another  young 
man. 

"  Yes.     Isn't  that  awful  ?  "  said  Bernard. 


A  DEAD  HAND  197 

"  Get  away.  You're  joking,"  said  the  young  man. 
"  Come  and  have  another  sett." 

"Damn  that  smug,  stupid,  unprincipled  snob  Molloy!" 
exclaimed  Bernard  on  the  way  home.  "  Whatever  happens, 
good  or  bad,  he'll  be  there  to  make  money  out  of  it.  I 
wonder  does  he  know  what  a  worm  he  is  ?  " 

4 

The  industrial  crisis  was  now  at  its  height.  Collisions 
between  strikers  and  police  were  frequent,  and  arrests  were 
increasing  in  number.  The  employers  were  determined  to 
break  the  labour  movement  for  good,  and  relied  on  starva- 
tion as  their  principal  weapon.  Already  this  was  beginning 
to  have  its  effect.  Infant  mortality  is  high  in  Dublin  at  the 
best  of  times:  now  it  was  becoming  appalling.  But  at  last 
English  labour  woke  up  to  the  importance  of  the  battle  in 
Dublin  in  regard  to  its  possible  effect  on  their  own  position. 
So  ships  laden  with  food  sailed  into  the  port  of  Dublin  and 
enabled  the  wearied  people  to  hold  out  a  little  longer. 

One  afternoon  Bernard  set  out  with  O'Dwyer  on  a  tour 
of  inspection.  They  met  McGurk  in  Westmoreland  Street 
and  stopped  for  a  moment  to  talk,  but  two  burly  policemen 
interrupted  them. 

"  Move  on  now,"  said  one.     "  No  gathering  are  allowed." 

The  "  gathering  "  broke  up,  McGurk  continuing  his  way 
towards  Grafton  Street,  the  other  two  making  for  the  river. 
A  patrol  of  mounted  police  clattered  by. 

"Stimulating,  isn't  it?"  said  O'Dwyer.  "I  do  love  a 
bit  of  coercion." 

On  the  quay  they  came  upon  the  end  of  a  queue  of  women 
and  children  waiting  their  turn  to  be  served  with  rations 
from  one  of  the  distributing  stations.  They  carried  sacks 
and  boxes  and  all  kinds  of  queer,  battered  domestic  utensils. 
In  their  eyes  was  a  uniform  look  of  patient  misery.  Bernard 
and  O'Dwyer  passed  the  whole  length  of  the  queue,  which 
was  nearly  two  hundred  yards  long:  two  hundred  yards  of 
human  dirt,  disease  and  wretchedness. 


198  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  My  God !  "  said  Bernard,  "  how  can  men  allow  this 
kind  of  thing  to  go  on  ?  " 

Just  then  Molloy  emerged  from  the  distributing  office. 
Evidently  he  had  been  there  in  connection  with  the  affairs 
of  one  of  his  unfortunate  clients. 

"  Phew !  What  a  crew !  "  he  said,  lighting  a  Turkish 
cigarette,  and  went  his  way. 

One  of  the  food-ships  had  been  sighted  just  before  this 
and  was  now  making  her  way  to  the  quay-side.  Bernard 
experienced  a  queer  kind  of  thrill  when  he  saw  her. 

"  See!  "  he  said  to  O'Dwyer.  "  She's  from  England,  the 
country  you  hate.  How  do  you  reconcile  that  with  your 
national  quarrel  theory  ?  This  is  a  class  war,  and  the  work- 
ing class  is  solid  whatever  flag  flies  over  it." 

"Rot!"  said  O'Dwyer.  "The  English  labour  crowd 
want  their  battle  fought  out  here.  It  saves  them  the  trouble 
and  expense.  What  are  a  few  tons  of  food  to  them  ?  " 

Bernard  shrugged  his  shoulders,  feeling  that  O'Dwyer 
was  entrenched  impregnably  in  prejudice.  They  turned 
now  into  the  wilderness  of  slums  behind  the  quays.  Here 
they  encountered  sights  which  Bernard  had  often  seen  before, 
but  which  were  now  stripped  of  the  covering  of  night. 
Tumble-down  houses  propped  up  with  beams;  roofless 
wrecks  still  inhabited  in  their  lower  stories;  skeleton  walls; 
heaps  of  rubble  where  a  house  had  collapsed;  windows 
boarded  up;  windowpanes  smashed  and  stuffed  with  rags 
and  paper;  dirt  and  ugliness  everywhere:  all  this  made  a 
hideous  picture  of  desolation  in  the  middle  of  the  capital  of 
a  civilized  country. 

And  the  people;  they  were  as  repulsive  a  picture  as  their 
houses.  Men:  slouching,  emaciated,  unkempt,  yet  healthy 
and  strong;  tubercular  wrecks;  rickety  children  grown  up; 
men  with  the  vacuous  faces  caused  by  adenoids;  cripples; 
degenerates.  Girls:  pasty-faced  and  slatternly;  some  pretty, 
but  with  blackened,  decayed  teeth  or  none  at  all;  hunch- 
backs ;  sore-encrusted  faces ;  grimy  creatures  all,  clad  in  filthy 
clothes  put  on  anyhow.  Children:  some  dirty,  half-naked 


A  DEAD  HAND  199 

yet  healthy,  happy  little  squallers;  others  rickety,  scrofulous, 
strumous  or  crippled.  Infants:  some  crushingly  wrapped 
in  the  foul  shawls  of  their  sisters;  others  sprawling  amid 
the  germ-laden  dust  of  the  roadway.  Old  women:  the  most 
horrible  of  all;  vermin-haunted  bundles  of  rags  with  grime- 
enseamed  faces  tottering  to  the  grave.  "  Citizens  of  a 
mighty  Empire!  "  said  Bernard  to  himself. 

"  Lord,  how  I  wish  I  was  in  politics,"  he  said  aloud. 
"  I've  got  such  schemes,  you  know.  Our  housing  people 
at  present  seem  to  have  got  hold  of  the  wrong  end  of  the 
stick  altogether.  Look  at  that  new  model  tenement  house 
over  there.  Already  half  the  windows  are  smashed,  the 
usual  dirty  linen  is  hanging  on  that  ridiculous  balcony,  and 
the  inside  is  as  dirty  as  ever.  What's  the  good  of  building 
new  houses  without  altering  the  people?  In  a  few  more 
years  that  new  model  thing  will  be  just  as  bad  as  the  old 
mansion  that  it  replaced,  and  not  half  as  picturesque.  We 
ought  to  smash  the  whole  thing  up.  Strip  the  people  of 
their  rags  and  camp  them  all  by  the  side  of  a  lake  some- 
where in  the  country.  Then  have  a  big  conflagration 
and  burn  up  the  houses,  dirt,  bacilli,  and  everything.  Then 
build  a  new  city  on  my  plan, — or,  better  still,  start  building 
first  on  a  new  site  altogether.  I've  never  seen  a  garden 
city,  but  I  think  my  plan  is  something  altogether  new.  In 
the  first  place  I'd  forbid  high  houses:  they  prevent  proper 
circulation  of  the  air.  Two  stories  high  would  be  quite 
enough.  My  houses  would  all  be  square  with  flat  roofs, 
perhaps  with  a  central  court  yard,  and  of  course  they'd  be 
detached.  They'd  stand  inside  a  garden,  having  a  few 
yards  of  ground  in  front  and  at  the  sides  and  a  space  of  say 
thirty  yards  or  so  at  the  back.  Then  the  houses  would 
surround  a  square,  so  that  there'd  be  a  big  common  area 
in  the  centre,  into  which  the  back  garden  of  each  house 
would  enter.  I'd  plant  that  with  trees  and  have  it  all 
grass.  This  plan  gives  every  house  plenty  of  free  space  and 
a  fair  amount  of  private  space  as  well.  Then  all  the  streets 
would  be  as  wide  as  Sackville  Street,  and  I'd  have  them 


200  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

lined  with  trees  and  have  fountains  here  and  there.  Oh, 
and  above  all  I'd  abolish  the  possibility  of  slums,  aristocratic 
quarters,  snobbery  and  class  hatred  by  appropriating  all 
house-property  to  the  state  and  having  a  low  and  universal 
rental,  so  that  scholars,  commercial  men,  shopkeepers, 
labourers,  and  marquises  (unless  I  succeed  in  abolishing 
them)  shall  live  side  by  side  and  their  children  play  in  the 
common  square.  .  .  .  What  do  you  think  of  that  scheme?  " 

"  It  would  require  some  acreage." 

"  That's  obtainable.  But  what  really  stands  in  my  way? 
The  natural  conservatism  of  the  human  mind,  and  muddled, 
stupid,  irresponsible,  inefficient  government." 

"  British  government,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

"  Always  the  same  old  answer." 

"  To  me  it's  such  an  obvious  truism,"  said  O'Dwyer. 
"  You  take  a  country  and  you  rob  it  of  its  government  and 
exchequer,  transferring  them  to  another  country  across  the 
sea.  What  must  happen?  The  best  brains  and  ability  in 
the  plundered  country  either  waste  themselves  in  a  futile 
effort  to  regain  their  rights,  or  else  go  over  to  the  foreign 
capital  to  employ  their  capacities  where  there's  an  outlet  and 
a  market  for  them.  Their  own  country  is  thus  left  to  the 
mediocrities  and  the  incapables.  Keep  that  process  up  long 
enough  and  you  eventually  get  the  state  of  things  now  exist- 
ing in  Ireland.  .  .  .  My  dear  chap,  England  won't  let  us 
improve  our  position.  If  we  were  to  prosper  we'd  soon 
cease  to  be  her  kitchen-garden  and  dumping-ground,  which 
is  what  she  wants  us  to  be  in  the  interests  of  her  own 
economic  position." 

"  But  Home  Rule  is  coming,  and  that  ought  to  settle  that 
difficulty." 

"  Well,  I'll  believe  we're  going  to  get  Home  Rule  when 
our  Parliament  is  actually  sitting;  not  before.  But  how  a 
glorified  county  council  for  local  affairs,  that  hasn't  even 
got  control  of  its  own  finances,  post  office,  commerce  or 
police,  is  going  to  change  everything  beats  me.  .  .  .  Be- 
sides, we've  a  right  to  independence,  confound  it." 


A  DEAD  HAND  201 

"  Hang  it  all!  "  said  Bernard.  "  I'll  chuck  Moore's  ad- 
vice overboard  and  go  and  read  some  Irish  History." 

"  About  time  you  thought  of  it,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

They  had  almost  shaken  off  the  slums  by  this  and  had 
reached  a  more  respectable  locality.  Bernard  turned  back 
for  a  last  look,  and  said: 

"  The  dirt  and  disease  and  discomfort  of  all  this  are  bad 
enough,  but  I  think  the  worst  part  of  it  all  is  its  ugliness. 
What  sort  of  souls  can  you  breed  down  there?  " 

"  Dublin  fusiliers,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

They  walked  on  in  silence  for  a  while  and  then  O'Dwyer 
spoke  again. 

"  What  we've  seen  today  is  bad  enough,"  he  said,  "  but 
it's  only  one  of  a  thousand  results  of  British  rule.  Why 
are  we  cityless,  harbourless,  without  industries,  rottenly 
educated,  and  declining  in  population?  There's  a  rather 
delightful  article  on  Ireland  in  the  old  Encyclopaedia  Britan- 
nica  written  by  some  one  quite  obviously  prejudiced  against 
us.  In  the  year  before  the  Union  he  says  there  were  forty 
silk  mercers  in  Dublin;  that  fifteen  years  after  the  Union, 
as  well  as  I  remember,  only  about  half  a  dozen  were  left; 
ten  years  after  that  there  was  only  one,  and  what  became  of 
him  isn't  recorded.  Doesn't  that  speak  for  itself?  Then, 
apart  from  France  which  is  committing  race  suicide,  we're 
the  only  country  in  Europe  with  a  declining  population: 
also  we're  the  only  country  in  Europe  under  British  rule. 
Isn't  that,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  significant?  The  position 
of  Unionists  is  to  me  incomprehensible.  If  Ireland  is  just 
a  part  of  Britain  as  they  hold,  how  is  she  poor,  and  without 
industries  and  cities,  and  declining  in  population?  Corn- 
wall and  Aberdeen  share  the  prosperity  of  Britain.  Why 
doesn't  Wexf ord  ?  Their  own  phrase  '  British  Government 
in  Ireland  '  shows  that  they  don't  consider  us  part  of  Britain. 
They  don't  talk  of  '  British  Government  in  East  Anglia.' 
They  must  know  quite  well  that  England  regards  Ireland 
as  a  conquered  country,  and  how  their  Irish  blood  doesn't 
boil  at  the  indignity  is  a  puzzle  to  me.  But  I  find  it  hard 


202  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

ever  to  convert  any  one,  for  I  was  born  a  Nationalist  and 
don't  really  understand  the  other  side  .  .  .  don't  know  what 
to  grip  on  to  in  them.  You  must  have  seen  that  yourself. 
I've  longed  to  set  Ireland  free  ever  since  I  first  heard  she'd 
been  conquered  .  .  .  longer  than  I  can  remember  in  fact. 
I  dreamed  of  wars  of  liberation  when  I  was  a  little  boy  in 
knickerbockers,  and  later  on  I  dreamed  of  great  projects  of 
reconstruction.  In  my  imagination  I've  built  great  cities 
and  harbours,  roads,  bridges,  fleets  and  forts.  I've  made 
laws  and  raised  armies  and  founded  industries.  I've  even 
built  a  cathedral  more  splendid  than  Solomon's  Temple. 
These  are  the  things  that  matter  to  me.  It's  torture  to  me 
to  see  pictures  of  Parliament  houses  in  Venezuela,  or  har- 
bours in  Canada,  or  cathedrals  in  Italy.  They  only  remind 
me  of  the  might-have-beens  of  Ireland.  Sometimes  when 
hope  for  Ireland  seems  dead  I  go  back  deliberately  to  my 
imaginings  and  try  to  satisfy  myself  with  them.  But  it's  no 
use.  Actuality  is  only  too  obvious.  Here  is  Ireland,  a 
land  of  tumble-down  villages,  wrecked  cities,  empty  har- 
bours, and  tubercular  people;  the  back  garden  from  which 
John  Bull  gets  his  bacon  and  butter  and  the  roast  beef  of  old 
England.  To  say  I  hate  England  is  to  express  a  very  small 
part  of  my  feeling  for  her.  I  loathe  her,  I  detest  her  and  I 
curse  her." 

O'Dwyer  stopped  abruptly  and  seemed  a  little  ashamed 
of  his  emotional  explosion.  But  Bernard  had  lent  only  half 
an  ear  to  the  last  part  of  his  harangue.  An  earlier  portion 
had  caught  and  held  his  attention. 

"  I  dreamed  of  cities  and  things  like  you,"  he  said.  It 
was  the  first  time  he  had  ever  thought  of  making  such  a 
confession.  "  But  it  wasn't  for  Ireland,"  he  added.  "  The 
world  was  my  country  then  .  .  .  but  it's  a  big  place." 

"  Why,  we're  kindred  spirits,"  said  O'Dwyer ;  and  they 
started  comparing  notes. 


A  DEAD  HAND  203 

5 

The  very  next  day  the  whole  complexion  of  Bernard's 
life  was  altered  by  a  letter. 

It  came  into  his  hands  under  peculiar  circumstances.  He 
had  just  written  a  letter  which  had  to  be  dispatched  that 
evening,  and  at  the  last  minute  found  himself  without  a 
stamp.  He  went  the  round  of  the  house  to  borrow  one  but 
it  chanced  that  nobody  had  any.  It  was  too  late  for  a  post 
office  to  be  open,  so  he  decided,  as  his  father  was  out,  to 
search  the  sacred  and  inviolate  bureau  in  his  consulting 
room.  In  none  of  the  drawers  could  be  find  what  he 
wanted,  and  finally  he  opened  a  rather  obvious  secret  drawer 
full  of  papers.  Without  really  expecting  to  find  a  stamp  he 
turned  these  over  and  suddenly  came  upon  an  envelope  ad- 
dressed to  himself  in  a  strange  hand.  He  pulled  it  out  and 
gave  a  gasp  of  astonishment,  for  in  the  top  left  hand  corner 
were  the  words :  to  be  opened  on  his  twenty-first  birthday. 

For  a  moment  he  sat  still  staring  at  his  find.  Then  he 
took  out  his  pocket  book, —  the  kind  of  pocket  book  that 
every  young  man  keeps;  a  receptacle  for  notes,  photographs, 
postage  stamps,  souvenirs,  letters,  and  odds  and  ends, —  and 
took  from  it  the  letter  he  had  received  from  Mr.  Murchison 
eighteen  months  ago.  He  laid  it  beside  the  other  and  quietly 
compared  them.  The  inscriptions  on  both  were  the  same, 
but  in  all  else  they  were  different:  the  paper  was  different, 
the  ink  was  different,  the  writing  was  different.  The  fine 
bold  lettering  of  the  newly  discovered  envelope  was  a  strong 
contrast  to  the  puny  backhand  of  the  old  one.  Turning  over 
the  former  he  found  that  it  had  been  sealed.  The  seal  was 
unbroken  and  the  top  of  the  envelope  had  been  cut  open  with 
a  paper-knife.  Bernard  took  out  the  enclosure  and  read  as 
follows : — 

3rd  January,  1899. 
My  dear  Bernard: 

If  ever  you  read  this  letter  you  will  be  reading  the  words 
of  a  dead  man,  for  if  I  survive  the  enterprise  on  which  I  am 
about  to  set  out  I  hope  to  be  spared  long  enough  to  sty  to 


204  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

you  what  I  am  now  going  to  write.  I  find  it  difficult  to 
realize  that  my  words  are  addressed  not  to  the  little  boy  I 
parted  from  yesterday  but  to  a  young  man  of  twenty-one. 
However,  I  shall  begin  at  once. 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  dreamt  like  you  of  wars  and  states 
and  cities,  and  my  games  were  very  similar  to  yours.  My 
ambition  was  to  make  the  world  a  fine  well-ordered  place 
with  good  laws  and  good  roads  and  beautiful  well-built 
cities  and  a  strong  healthy  population  to  inhabit  it.  Yours, 
I  should  think,  would  be  the  same.  But  I  differed  from  you 
in  one  thing.  My  parents  taught  me  to  know  and  love  my 
own  country,  Ireland.  They  taught  me  her  history,  her 
glorious  beginnings,  her  splendid  struggle,  her  miserable 
tragedy,  so  that  the  desire  of  my  life  has  always  been  to 
drive  out  her  oppressor  and  make  her  once  more  peaceful 
and  prosperous  like  the  land  of  my  boyish  dreams.  As  a 
young  man  I  took  part  in  an  ill-conceived  attempt  to  achieve 
this  end.  IV e  jailed.  My  companions  all  lost  their  liberty 
and  I  myself  had  a  narrow  escape.  For  years  I  have  waited 
for  another  opportunity  to  strike  a  blow  at  the  enemy,  and 
now  at  last  it  has  come.  The  British  Empire  is  about  to 
deprive  yet  another  little  nation  of  liberty  and  in  a  few  days 
I  sail  from  here  to  go  to  the  help  of  the  Boers. 

So  much  for  myself.  I  should  be  the  last  person  ever  to 
try  and  influence  the  principles  of  another.  These  I  think 
should  be  the  spontaneous  outcome  of  the  individual  mind 
and  will.  But  you,  Bernard,  are  going  to  be  brought  up  in 
ignorance  of  your  country's  history,  in  ignorance  of  her 
needs,  in  ignorance  almost  of  her  name.  That  I  do  wish 
to  combat,  and  I  earnestly  implore  you  to  break  through  that 
ignorance  by  reading  now,  if,  as  I  suppose,  you  have  not 
done  so,  the  history  of  Ireland.  What  decision  you  may 
take  after  you  have  done  so  I  shall  not  presume  to  say, 
but  if  you  are  the  boy  I  take  you  for  I  am  certain  what  it 
will  be. 

And  what  history  should  you  read?  Of  course  I  should 
suggest  an  impartial  one.  But  is  there  such  a  thing?  Is 


A  DEAD  HAND  205 

there  such  a  thing  for  any  country?  Human  nature  is  such 
that  the  history  one  writes  of  one's  own  country  is  sure  to 
be  prejudiced  one  way,  and  what  one  writes  of  another 
country  will  be  prejudiced  the  other  way.  The  truth  is  not 
in  us.  And  the  histories  that  profess  to  be  impartial  (for 
most  of  them  realize  the  futility  of  the  pretence)  are  really 
more  misleading  than  any.  They  seem  to  think  that  im- 
partiality consists  in  telling  half  the  truth  or  in  throwing 
sops  to  both  sides.  Therefore  I  can  only  advise  you  to 
read  as  many  histories  as  you  can  and  form  your  own  judg- 
ment as  to  where  the  truth  lies. 

Most  of  my  fortune  is  embarked  upon  our  present  enter- 
Prise,  but  the  remainder  I  am  leaving  to  you  by  will.  It  is 
not  enough  for  you  to  live  on,  which  is  just  as  well,  as  I 
don't  want  you  to  become  one  of  the  idle  rich.  But  it  is  at 
least  enough  to  enable  you  to  take  your  own  line  in  politics 
by  making  you  independent  of  the  paternal  purse.  Call  on 
Mr.  Murchison,  my  friend  and  solicitor,  who  will  give  you 
full  particulars. 

And  now,  Bernard,  I'll  say  good-bye.     This  letter  may 
never  have  to  be  delivered.     I  sincerely  hope  so  myself.     But 
in  case  things  go  wrong,  good-bye,  and  God  bless  you. 
I  remain, 

Your  affectionate  uncle, 

CHRISTOPHER  REILLY. 

The  letter  finished,  Bernard  sat  back  in  his  father's  chair 
and  literally  gasped.  Here  was  a  revelation!  The  last 
shreds  of  political  doubt  were  torn  from  his  mind  and  the 
last  shreds  of  filial  respect  from  his  heart  by  the  clutch  of  a 
dead  hand.  The  forgery  was  now  quite  obvious.  That 
back-hand  script  was  so  clearly  a  handwriting  disguised; 
the  age  of  the  envelope  and  paper  so  clearly  faked;  the  ink 
quite  evidently  bleached,  probably  with  peroxide.  What 
damnable  dishonesty  and  obscurantism!  He  sat  for  quarter 
of  an  hour  in  meditation.  What  course  should  he  now 
pursue?  Should  he  face  his  father  with  the  evidence  of  his 


206  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

deception?  What  need  after  all?  It  had  failed  in  its 
object.  Why  raise  unnecessary  unpleasantness?  Better  put 
the  letter  back  and  say  nothing  about  it.  But  then,  he 
wanted  Uncle  Chris's  letter;  the  letter  of  a  hero;  the  letter 
of  a  martyr  to  an  idea.  .  .  .  He  had  a  sudden  inspiration. 
He  changed  the  envelopes  of  the  letters,  and  replaced  his 
uncle's  envelope  containing  his  father's  forgery  in  the 
drawer,  which  he  closed.  Now  if  his  father  went  to  the 
drawer  he  would  think  his  treasure  safe  unless  he  opened 
the  letter,  which  was  very  unlikely.  Chris's  letter  he  placed 
in  his  pocket-book. 

Suddenly  the  door  opened  and  Sir  Eugene  entered.  He 
was  in  evening  dress. 

"  Hello!     What  are  you  doing  here?  "  he  said. 

"  I  was  looking  for  a  stamp,  father." 

"  Well,  you've  no  business  to  go  to  my  desk.  Don't  you 
know  that  that's  dishonourable?" 

The  blood  rushed  to  Bernard's  cheeks,  and  his  heart 
jumped  violently.  Before  he  could  control  himself  he 
blurted  out: 

"  And  don't  you  think  it's  dishonourable  to  lie  and  forge 
letters?  " 

Sir  Eugene's  face  became  black  with  rage. 

"  You  young  brat,"  he  shouted.  "  How  dare  you  speak 
to  me  like  that  ?  " 

Bernard  was  his  father's  son.  His  own  anger  boiled  over 
simultaneously. 

"  WTiat  the  devil  did  you  mean  by  forging  my  uncle's 
letter?"  he  demanded. 

Sir  Eugene  controlled  himself  by  a  visible  effort. 

"  I  forged  your  uncle's  letter,  did  I  ? "  he  sneered. 
"  That's  a  nice  accusation  to  make  against  your  father." 

"  It's  no  use  denying  it,  governor,"  said  Bernard.  "  I 
have  the  original  in  my  pocket." 

Sir  Eugene  evidently  realized  that  further  deception  was 
imposssible,  for  he  said  nothing  and  sat  down.  But  Bernard 
was  not  finished.  His  tone  was  bitter  as  he  saicjl ;  "  You're 


A  DEAD  HAND  207 

the  fine  moral  teacher,  aren't  you  ?  '  I  needn't  tell  you  never 
to  do  anything  dishonourable,  for  you're  my  son.'  Hm!  " 

Sir  Eugene  winced  at  the  quotation,  but  he  sprang  up  to 
defend  himself. 

"  I  did  my  duty  as  your  father  in  trying  to  keep  from 
you  the  insidious  suggestions  of  a  traitor  to  his  King  and 
country.  I  wish  to  heaven  I'd  burnt  the  thing.  I  only 
kept  it  so  as  to  show  it  to  you  when  you  were  old  enough 
to  think  for  yourself." 

"Ninety-nine?"  suggested  Bernard. 

"  Bernard,  for  God's  sake  tear  the  thing  up  now  and  don't 
read  it." 

"  I've  read  it  already." 

"  Well,  burn  it  and  think  no  more  about  it." 

"  Look  here,  father.  You  must  think  very  highly  of  a 
cause  if  you're  afraid  that  a  few  words  in  its  favour  will 
make  me  take  it  up." 

"  Young  men  are  easily  led  into  romantic  absurdity, 
Bernard." 

"  Still,  it  would  surely  have  been  better  to  let  me  see  the 
letter  and  put  your  case  against  it  instead  of  deceiving  me." 

"  I  acted  for  the  best,  laddie.  I  was  hasty,  I  admit,  but 
I  was  so  afraid  for  your  future." 

"  Well,"  said  Bernard,  "  I'll  say  no  more.  What's  done 
can't  be  undone,  and  things  have  come  out  all  right  in  the 
end.  .  .  .  Good  night,  father." 

He  made  for  the  door  but  a  sudden  recollection  made  him 
stop,  and  turning  to  his  father  he  said: 

"The  beastliest  part  of  all  your  treachery  was  sticking 
that  '  Pray  for  me  '  into  your  forgery.  I'll  find  it  hard  to 
forgive  that." 

And  without  another  word  he  left  the  room. 

6 

Two  days  later  Bernard  sailed  out  of  Kingstown  Harbour 
with  a  book  and  a  lunch  basket.  The  weather  was  perfect. 
A  light  breeze  flicked  the  water  into  ripples  that  danced  and 


208  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

glinted  in  the  sun  and  swished  and  lapped  under  his  clinker 
planks.  A  heat  haze  was  beginning  to  rise  at  the  mouth  of 
the  bay,  promising  a  flat  calm.  He  headed  for  the  purple 
lump  of  Howth  and  hove  to  a  dozen  cable  lengths  from  her 
shore.  Already  the  wind  was  dropping  and  his  reef-points 
slap-slapped  lazily  against  the  slackened  sail.  In  this  idyllic 
way  he  commenced  to  read  Joyce's  Concise  History  of  Ire- 
land. He  read  for  two  hours  to  the  accompaniment  of  the 
creak  of  his  timbers,  the  plup-plup  of  the  wavelets,  and  the 
screams  of  sea  gulls.  Then  he  stopped ;  lunched  off  ham 
sandwiches,  sultana  cake,  and  bottled  beer;  and  smoked  his 
pipe.  That  done,  he  resumed  his  reading  until  the  chill  of 
the  rising  evening  breeze  suggested  home. 

During  the  following  week  Bernard  ransacked  the  book- 
sellers of  Grafton  Street  and  the  quays  and  bought  every 
book  about  Ireland  that  he  could  find.  They  made  a  mis- 
cellaneous collection:  Lecky,  Jonah  Barrington,  John 
Mitchell,  Standish  O'Grady,  O'Connor-Morris,  A.  M. 
Sullivan,  Mrs.  Stopford  Green,  Joyce,  Barry  O'Brien;  the 
Autobiography  of  Wolfe  Tone,  The  Jail  Journal,  The  Spirit 
of  the  Nation;  recently  published  Nationalist  and  Unionist 
brochures;  and  most  instructive  of  all,  the  works  of  Fintan 
Lalor.  .  .  .  Bernard  was  due  for  his  final  examination  in 
September,  and  had  already  been  studying  for  it  for  a  month 
or  more,  but  he  resolved  to  postpone  it  till  March  in  order 
to  fill  what  he  now  realized  had  been  an  enormous  gap  in 
his  education.  It  was  now  the  sixth  of  August,  and  but  for 
his  examination  work  he  would  have  been  away  from  Dublin 
on  holiday.  His  decision  taken,  he  hired  a  tent,  pitched  it 
in  a  convenient  position  near  the  sea  at  Malahide,  stocked  it 
with  his  books,  and  sailed  over  to  moorings  in  the  estuary 
three  days  later.  Then  he  settled  down  to  his  task. 

He  read  the  History  of  Ireland.  He  read  of  her  half- 
legendary  beginnings,  of  her  semi-historical  heroic  period, 
of  her  early  arts  and  sciences.  He  read  of  her  astounding 
conversion  to  Christianity  and  of  the  glorious  days  when 
she  seemed  to  be  entirely  devoted,  as  no  other  country  be- 


A  DEAD  HAND  209 

fore  or  since  has  been  devoted,  to  religion  and  learning: 
of  the  days  when  she  was  a  university  to  a  dark  and  savage 
Europe.  Then  he  read  of  the  desperate,  long-drawn-out 
struggle  with  the  Norsemen  when  she  seemed  doomed  to 
destruction  but  won  through  by  the  valour  of  her  sons  and 
the  genius  of  Brian  Borumha.  Evil  days  followed  on  her 
triumph  and  he  read  with  dismay  of  the  sickening  dissensions 
that  broke  up  the  nearly  completed  unity  of  the  nation  and 
left  it  at  the  mercy  of  the  organized  invader  from  England. 
Then  he  read  of  the  seven  hundred  years'  struggle  against 
the  strangling  grip  of  the  conqueror:  of  Godfrey  O'Donnell 
and  Edward  Bruce  and  Art  MacMur rough ;  of  the  Ger- 
aldines  and  Shane  the  Proud  and  Hugh  O'Neill ;  —  heroic 
efforts,  tragic  failures  that  served  only  to  rivet  the  chains 
more  firmly.  He  read  on  as  generation  after  generation  in 
turn  took  up  the  sword  only  to  fall  beaten  and  exhausted: 
Owen  Roe  O'Neill  and  the  men  of  1641 ;  Sarsfield  and  the 
men  of  the  Williamite  wars ;  passed  in  a  splendid  and  mourn- 
ful pageant  before  his  eyes.  Then  came  the  penal  laws  and 
he  saw  his  disarmed  and  broken  countrymen  clinging  man- 
fully to  their  persecuted  religion.  Then  came  the  gleam  of 
temporary  hope  and  fugitive  success  in  1782,  followed  by 
the  lurid  catastrophe  of  1798,  and  finally  the  sordid  trans- 
action of  the  Union  with  Great  Britain  came  as  a  pitiful 
anti-climax.  Yet  for  this  indomitable  nation  the  struggle 
was  not  yet  over.  Came  the  tithe  war  and  then  the  battle 
for  religious  emancipation,  won  eventually  from  the  fear 
of  the  conqueror  for  this  disarmed  and  weary  people.  Then 
the  Repeal  agitation,  the  trumpet  call  qf  Young  Ireland,  the 
hideous  tragedy  of  the  great  famine,  and  the  miserable  col- 
lapse of  the  '48  insurrection.  With  quarter  of  the  popula- 
tion dead  and  another  quarter  flying  over  the  seas  for  life 
was  Ireland  conquered  yet?  No.  At  the  call  of  the  Fenians 
he  saw  her  draw  the  sword  again,  'and  again  fall  beaten  to 
the  ground.  And  then  he  came  to  Parnell  and  modern  his- 
tory and  saw  the  survivors  of  that  wonderful  nation  peace- 
ably, reasonably,  yet  firmly  for  all  that,  asking  for  a  tithe  of 


210  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

their  rights,  and  clinging  to  their  demand  in  face  of  per- 
petual rebuffs.  The  history  of  a  wasted  island. 

"Good  God!  "  groaned  Bernard,  "what  we  might  have 
done  for  the  world  had  this  heavy  hand  been  lifted  off  us! 
The  wasted,  wasted  effort !  " 

He  thought  of  the  mighty  men  who  had  worn  themselves 
ont  in  the  futile  struggle :  of  Hugh  O'Neill,  as  great  a  mon- 
arch as  Louis  XIV.,  beaten  and  broken  to  a  miserable  sur- 
render; of  Owen  Roe,  as  great  a  general  as  Cromwell, 
already  with  a  European  reputation,  who  threw  up  all  to 
serve  his  country  and  die  in  the  attempt;  of  Wolfe  Tone, 
a  statesman  of  the  noblest  type,  who  attempted  a  greater 
task  than  Hannibal,  and  perished  by  his  own  hand  in  a 
dungeon  cell;  of  the  brilliant  constructive  intellects  of  the 
Young  Irelanders  wasted  and  smashed  by  the  conqueror's 
unrelenting  hand;  of  Parnell,  sacrificed  to  the  hypocrisy  of 
pretended  liberators.  What  might  not  the  world  have 
gained  from  these  had  not  duty  called  them  to  take  up  their 
motherland's  eternal  cause?  Burning  hate  entered  into  his 
soul  at  the  thought;  righteous  hate;  hate  such  as  he  had 
never  felt  before, —  save  once.  The  same  feelings  surged  up 
in  him,  only  more  intensely,  as  on  that  distant  day  at  Ash- 
bury  when  he  had  seen  Sherringham  smash  Reppington's 
steam  engine.  "  You've  destroyed  something  you  can't  re- 
place," he  had  said  on  that  occasion  and  the  same  phrase 
recurred  to  him  now. 

And  then  for  the  first  time  he  realized  fully  the  selfishness 
and  shallowness  of  the  class  he  belonged  to:  of  his  father, 
of  the  Heuston  Harringtons,  of  the  Harveys,  and  of  hun- 
dreds of  others.  The  tragedy  of  their  country  was  a  closed 
book  to  them,  and  if  they  knew  anything  of  its  contents  they 
took  care  not  to  think  about  it  lest  it  should  interfere  with 
their  way  of  life.  They  call  it  "  politics,"  he  reflected,  and 
so  banish  it  from  polite  conversation.  A  phrase  of  Mitch- 
ell's occurred  to  him. 

"  Dastards!  "  he  said.     "  Genteel  dastards." 

And  again: 


A  DEAD  HAND  211 

"  /  was  to  have  been  brought  up  that  way.  Thank  God 
I  was  saved  from  that." 

"  All  our  middle  class  is  the  same,"  he  said  later,  "  even 
those  who  call  themselves  nationalists.  And  there's  less 
excuse  for  them,  because  they  know  the  facts  and  disregard 
them.  They  think  aright,  most  of  them,  but  won't  act  for 
fear  of  injuring  their  damned  respectability." 

Later  still  he  asked  himself: 

"And  what  now?  What  can  I  do?  I  must  act,  for  he 
that  isn't  with  Ireland  is  against  her.  Every  one  who  stands 
by  and  does  nothing  acknowledges  and  assists  British  govern- 
ment by  his  acquiescence." 

The  problem  was  a  difficult  one.  Home  Rule  he  knew  to 
be  illogical,  a  delusion  and  a  snare,  and  possibly  a  will-o'- 
the-wisp.  Yet  the  people  had  accepted  it.  His  democratic 
principles  forced  him  to  abide  by  the  decision  of  the  people, 
but  he  resolved  to  set  out  to  convert  them. 

Suddenly  he  began  to  laugh  to  himself. 

"Convert  them!  I?  A  young  medical  student.  Re- 
cently a  seoinin  and  a  convert  myself.  .  .  .  Well,  stranger 
things  have  happened." 

He  remembered  the  state-making  dreams  of  his  boyhood. 
Surely,  thought  he,  that  was  not  all  for  nothing? 

"Was  I  a  statesman  in  embryo?  Am  I,  too,  with  my 
plans  and  projects  wasting  to  nothing  under  the  blight  of 
the  conquest?  Let's  be  up  and  doing.  There  are  heads 
and  hands  in  Ireland  still,  and  let  mine  be  among  them." 

All  night  he  lay  awake  in  his  tent  listening  to  the  wash  of 
the  sea  on  the  beach  below,  and  through  his  mind  passed 
visions  of  stately  cities  and  teeming  commerce  and  fertile 
fields  and  fine  healthy  men  and  women. 

"  How  long,  O  Lord,  how  long?  "  he  muttered,  and  fell 
asleep  just  as  the  sun  crept  up  out  of  the  eastern  sea. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A   MEETING 

I 

A  YOUNG  man  in  the  middle  twenties,  not  tall  but 
powerfully  built,  with  a  leathern  satchel  on  his  back 
and  a  tough  ash-plant  in  his  hand,  alighted  from  the  Rath- 
farnham  tram  at  Nelson  Pillar  and  stood  looking  about  him 
with  mingled  interest  and  astonishment.  To  a  dweller  in 
the  country,  as  everything  about  this  young  man  from  his 
bronzed  complexion  to  his  rough-cut  clothing  proclaimed  him 
to  be,  his  first  impression  of  a  city,  even  if  he  be  prepared 
for  it  by  photographs  and  descriptions,  is  bound  to  be  one  of 
stupefaction,  for  no  description  can  adequately  convey  an 
appreciation  of  the  eternal  roar  and  rattle  of  traffic,  and  no 
photograph  can  impart  the  sensation  of  being  alone  in  a 
crowd  of  hurrying  and  unnoticing  humanity.  And  on  that 
day  Dublin  must  have  been  more  than  usually  stupefying, 
for  the  streets  were  more  than  ordinarily  thronged  with 
people,  many  of  whom  stood  about  in  little  whispering 
groups  until  the  police  came  and  moved  them  on.  The 
police  were  very  much  in  evidence,  the  glittering  metal  work 
of  their  helmets  showing  here  and  there  above  the  heads  of 
the  crowd,  while  others  patrolled  the  street  on  horseback. 
There  was  mental  tension  in  the  atmosphere,  perceptible 
even  to  the  stranger. 

He  turned  and  addressed  a  dirty  ill-clad  figure  lounging 
against  the  railings  round  the  pillar. 

"There  seems  toxbe  some  sort  of  expectation  in  the  air," 
he  said.  "  What's  going  to  happen?  " 

The  lounger  took  from  his  mouth  the  short  black  clay 
pipe  he  was  smoking,  spat  voluminously  into  the  street,  and 
replied  contemptuously. 


A  MEETING  213 

"  D'ye  mean  to  say  ye  don't  know  that?  " 

"  Obviously,"  returned  Stephen,  for  it  was  he,  "  or  I 
shouldn't  ask." 

"  Yer  English,  maybe?  "  said  the  lounger. 

"  Maybe  I'm  not,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Then  yer  accent  deceived  me." 

"  Well,  what's  going  to  happen  anyway?  " 

"  Is  it  the  counthry  yev  come  from  now  ?  " 

"  Yes.     But  ...  " 

"  Ah,  it's  fine  to  be  livin'  in  the  country  at  this  time  o' 
year.  I  do  be  mindin'  the  time  I  was  livin'  in  the  county 
Wexford  an'  me  a  boy.  Them  was  the  gran'  times  entirely. 
But  musha  'twas  another  thing  for  the  young  men.  Up 
workin'  before  the  sun  an'  maybe  not  gettin'  to  bed  till  a 
long  time  afther.  Sure  the  city's  good  enough  for  me." 

He  gave  a  sigh  and  began  to  pare  chips  off  a  plug  of 
greasy  tobacco  he  took  from  his  pocket. 

"  But  will  you  tell  me  what's  all  the  excitement  about?  " 
said  Stephen  as  patiently  as  he  could. 

"  Yerra,  what  would  it  be  about  but  Jim  Laarkin?  He 
has  the  whole  town  turned  upsydown  this  twelve  months 
maybe.  .  .  .  Him  an'  his  '  To  Hell  with  conthracts.'  Why 
can't  he  let  well  alone?  That's  what  I  say." 

"  But  what  has  he  done  now?  " 

"  It's  going  to  hold  a  meetin'  he  is,  as  if  we  hadn't  enough 
and  to  spare  this  three  months.  ...  I'd  meetin'  him  begob 
if  I  got  me  hands  on  um,  so  I  would." 

"  And  when  is  the  meeting  to  be?  " 

"  It's  not  goin'  to  be  at  all.  ...  It's  ...  what  d'ye 
call  it?  ...  Proclaimed.  Laarkin  swears  he'll  hold  it  all 
the  same  though.  An'  maybe  he  will,  an'  maybe  he  won't." 

"  And  where  and  when  is  it  to  be?  " 

"  Sure  there  won't  be  anny  meetin'  at  all  I'm  tellin'  ye. 
Leastways  there  mightn't  be." 

"  But  supposing  it's  held  where  will  it  be?  " 

"  It'll  be  here,  o'  course,  afther  twelve  o'clock  Mass." 

"  I  see.     Thank  you." 


2i4  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Have  y'  e'er  a  match  ?  " 

"  No.     I'm  sorry." 

"  Arra,  what  good  are  ye?     Why,  I  mind  the  time.  .  .  ." 

But  Stephen  did  not  wait  for  any  more  reminiscences. 
He  went  over  to  the  sweet  shop  at  the  corner  and  asked  the 
way  to  the  street  where  his  hotel  was.  Dusk  was  falling  as 
he  climbed  up  the  slope  of  Cavendish  Row.  Five  minutes' 
walk  took  him  to  his  destination,  a  shabby  looking  house 
grandiosely  labelled  in  large  soot-grimed  gilded  letters: 

HO    EL      NEPTU     E 

He  waited  in  the  tarnished  hall  wondering  what  could 
have  induced  any  one  to  buy  the  vases,  mirrors,  stands, 
statues  and  pictures  with  which  it  was  encumbered,  while 
the  slovenly  streeling  maid  went  to  fetch  the  proprietor. 
The  latter  emerged  eventually  from  dim  regions  at  the  back 
of  the  house,  a  fat  genially-smiling  man  clad  in  shiny  grease- 
spotted  clothes.  He  held  out  a  fat  moist  hand  to  Stephen, 
saying : 

"An!  are  you  the  son  of  oul'  Mick  W^ard?  I'm  right 
glad  to  see  you.  Yer  bag's  here  safe  an'  sound.  An'  how's 
yer  father?  Come  along  up  an'  I'll  show  ye  yer  room. 
Mind  ye  don't  thrip  there.  I've  been  goin'  to  have  that 
carpet  tacked  down  this  three  year,  but  I  always  forget,  an' 
sure  what  does  it  matter?  Ye  mus'  be  tired  afther  yer 
thramp.  I've  toul'  them  to  bring  y'up  some  tay  to  the 
coffee  room,  an'  maybe  ye'll  thry  a  bit  o'  cold  mate." 

At  this  point  they  reached  the  room  assigned  to  Stephen, 
who  was  glad  to  see  his  bag  lying  in  one  corner. 

"  When  yer  done  washin'  ye  can  come  down,"  said  his 
host,  leaving  him  alone. 

Stephen  surveyed  the  room.  Its  seedy  appearance  and 
musty  atmosphere  were  very  oppressive  to  eyes  and  lungs 
accustomed  to  greenery  and  mountain  air.  But  the  room 
was  large  and  had  a  generous  window,  for  the  Hotel  Nep- 
tune was  an  Old  Georgian  Mansion  in  the  second  stage  of 


A  MEETING  215 

the  descent  which  Dublin  houses  of  that  kind  inevitably 
follow.  When  the  Act  of  Union  drove  its  original  aristo- 
cratic owner  to  London  it  had  become  the  abode  of  comfort- 
able people  of  the  middle  class.  This  was  the  first  stage  of 
the  descent.  As  the  house  grew  shabbier  and  society  de- 
serted the  north  for  the  south  side  of  the  city  such  tenants 
no  longer  sought  it,  and  it  descended  to  the  second  stage. 
When  its  present  proprietor  smashed  or  died  it  would  pass 
into  the  third  stage,  becoming  converted  into  offices  for 
obscure  societies  and  struggling  young  solicitors.  Finally  it 
would  become  a  tenement  house,  and  remain  so  until  the 
day  of  its  ultimate  collapse. 

Stephen  washed  and  went  down  to  the  coffee  room  where 
on  a  table-cloth  stained  with  gravy  and  mustard  was  laid  a 
meal  consisting  of  tea,  bread  and  butter,  jam  and  nearly 
cold  beef.  In  the  centre  of  the  table  was  a  dismal  and 
crooked  cruet  stand;  one  of  whose  bottles  was  missing,  an- 
other empty,  while  dried  up  mustard  occupied  the  third,  a 
pinch  of  pepper  the  fourth,  and  quarter  of  an  inch  of  vinegar 
the  fifth.  The  tea  was  served  in  a  chipped  earthen-ware  pot 
with  a  cover  that  did  not  match;  the  handles  of  the  knives 
were  loose  and  the  blades  worn  and  battered;  while  the 
prongs  of  the  fork  were  bent,  with  traces  of  dried  up  egg 
between  them.  In  spite  of  these  deterrents  to  appetite  he 
make  a  good  meal,  distracted  a  little  by  the  chatter  of  his 
host  who  sat  with  him  for  a  while.  Almost  immediately 
after  he  went  upstairs  to  bed,  and  lulled  by  the  gradually 
decreasing  sounds  of  traffic,  fell  asleep. 

a 

Mass  was  over  at  the  Pro-Cathedral.  The  congregation 
swept  in  a  dense  jostling  stream  along  the  narrow  alley 
leading  into  Sackville  Street  carrying  Stephen  along  with  it. 
In  the  great  thoroughfare  there  was  an  air  of  expectation 
tenser  than  on  the  night  before.  There  were  small  knots 
of  Transport  Workers  here  and  there,  but  most  of  the  occu- 
pants of  the  street  were  church-goers  in  their  Sunday  best 


216  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

who  had  paused  on  the  way  to  and  from  their  devotions  in 
anticipation  of  excitement.  The  police  were  even  more 
conspicuous  than  on  the  Saturday  and  there  was  a  compact 
force  at  the  north  side  of  the  street. 

"  Jem'll  keep  his  word,  never  you  fear,"  Stephen  heard 
a  working-man  say  to  an  inquiring  clerk. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  murmur  and  then  a  cry  from  the 
crowd.  Stephen,  following  the  direction  of  the  general  gaze, 
saw  a  bearded  man  in  a  frock  coat  step  out  on  the  balcony 
of  the  great  hotel  before  him  and  raise  his  hand.  In  a  sec- 
ond the  beard  and  silk  hat  were  cast  aside  revealing  the  well- 
known  features  of  the  labour  leader.  A  cheer  went  up  from 
the  crowd,  to  be  changed  immediately  into  a  cry  of  alarm. 
The  press  grew  denser  to  Stephen's  left,  swayed  a  moment, 
and  then  broke  up  into  stampeding  units.  Above  the  heads 
of  the  people  Stephen  could  see  the  helmets  of  the  police, 
who  had  formed  into  a  close  line  and  charged.  Shouts  and 
the  sound  of  blows  could  be  heard.  He  was  almost  lifted 
from  his  feet  and  borne  away  by  the  living  avalanche.  All 
round  him  men,  women  and  children  fought  and  scrambled 
their  way  to  safety.  After  yielding  at  first  Stephen  managed 
eventually  to  hold  his  ground.  The  line  of  police  was 
nearer  to  him  now.  He  could  see  the  rise  and  fall  of  their 
batons  striking  indiscriminately  at  the  crowd.  Women  and 
old  men  seeking  for  nothing  but  escape  were  struck  as  sav- 
agely as  young  men  who  had  tried  to  resist.  Stephen  saw 
one  policeman  deliberately  strike  on  the  head  a  middle-aged 
man  who  had  already  been  beaten  to  the  ground.  Suddenly 
events  took  a  new  turn.  The  police  thrust  a  wedge  into  the 
heart  of  the  crowd,  and  the  portion  in  which  Stephen  was 
included  was  driven  back  on  the  portico  of  the  General  Post 
Office.  Some  of  the  unfortunate  people  descried  a  lane  here 
which  offered  some  prospect  of  refuge  and  there  was  an  im- 
mediate rush  in  that  direction.  Stephen  was  swept  along  in 
the  general  panic  into  the  narrow  alley,  which,  however, 
proved  to  be  a  cul-de-sac,  a  veritable  death-trap.  The  police 
were  now  fighting  mad  and  beyond  control.  A  few  of  them 


A  MEETING  217 

followed  the  terrified  crowd  into  the  cul-de-sac  plying  their 
batons  with  demon  fury  on  their  unresisting  victims.  Shouts 
and  shrieks  hurtled  through  the  air.  In  the  main  thorough- 
fare the  crowd  had  broken  up  in  panic  flight  pursued  by  the 
unrelenting  forces  of  the  law.  In  the  blind  alley  the  hud- 
dled and  paralysed  mass  of  people  was  at  the  mercy  of  its 
assailants.  A  young  woman  near  Stephen  shrank  cowering 
into  the  shelter  of  a  doorway  as  an  enormous  policeman  rag- 
ing like  a  bull  ploughed  his  way  through  the  crowd  towards 
her  as  if  he  had  singled  her  out  for  destruction.  Stephen 
hurriedly  interposed  with  his  ash-plant,  but  before  he  could 
free  his  arm  sufficiently  to  use  it  the  policeman's  heavy  baton 
had  descended  with  crushing  force  on  his  head.  Uttering 
a  sharp  cry  Stephen  fell  to  the  ground  insensible. 


3 

When  he  regained  consciousness  he  found  himself  lying 
on  the  ground,  his  head,  which  was  bound  up  with  a  hand- 
kerchief, being  supported  by  a  young  man  who  was  kneeling 
beside  him. 

"  What's  happened  ?  "  said  Stephen. 

"  You're  all  right,"  replied  the  young  man.  "  You  got 
a  nasty  bat  on  the  head,  but  I  don't  think  it's  done  any  real 
damage.  Let  me  shift  you  over  so  as  you  can  rest  against 
the  wall  there." 

With  the  young  man's  help  he  propped  himself  up  in  a 
sitting  position  in  a  slight  recess.  Looking  round  him  he 
saw  that  the  alley  was  like  a  battle  field.  Slightly  injured 
persons  were  moving  away  tying  up  their  wounds  with  hand- 
kerchiefs ;  three  or  four  prostrate  figures  were  being  attended 
to  by  their  friends;  ten  yards  from  where  he  sat  lay  the 
senseless  figure  of  the  policeman  who  had  assaulted  him. 

"  Not  a  bad  bit  of  work  that,"  said  Stephen's  protector, 
following  the  direction  of  his  glance.  "  He  bent  down  to 
finish  you  off  with  a  second  tap,  so  I  caught  up  your  ash- 
plant  and  laid  him  out.  .  .  .  Some  stick!  " 


2i8  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

He  fingered  the  ash-plant  affectionately.  Then  he  said 
suddenly : 

"  If  you're  anyway  fit  to  walk  let's  get  a  move  on.  Good- 
ness knows  what's  happening,  but  if  that  mass  of  viscous 
adiposity,"  he  indicated  the  policeman,  "  were  to  come  to, 
he'd  identify  us.  .  .  .  We  might  get  a  cab  in  Parnell  Street. 
Where  do  you  live?  " 

Stephen  told  him.  The  young  man  assisted  him  to  his 
feet,  and  Stephen  found  that  though  his  head  was  painful 
and  his  limbs  shaky  he  was  well  able  to  walk.  They  made 
their  way  out  of  the  alley  into  Sackville  Street  where  the 
likeness  to  a  stricken  field  was  even  stronger.  Turning  to 
the  left  they  passed  along  Upper  Sackville  Street  and  by 
good  fortune  secured  a  cab  in  Parnell  Street.  As  they  drove 
towards  his  hotel  Stephen  said: 

"My  name's  Stephen  Ward.     What's  yours?" 

"  Lascelles,"  said  the  young  man.  "  Bernard  Lascelles. 
.  .  .  You're  not  a  Dubliner,  I  suppose  ?  " 

"  I  only  arrived  here  last  night." 

"  You've  had  rather  a  rough  welcome,  I'm  afraid.  But 
we're  used  to  that  kind  of  thing  here.  This  was  really  only 
a  culmination.  .  .  .  How's  the  head  ?  " 

The  ramshackle  cab  drawn  by  its  decrepit  old  horse  rum- 
bled on.  Stephen  had  time  to  observe  his  rescuer.  He  had 
an  interesting  face:  there  was  firmness  in  his  finely  modelled 
lips,  will  and  purpose  in  his  powerful  jaw,  thought  in  his 
broad  brow,  and  laughter  and  sorrow  in  his  light  blue  eyes. 
The  carriage  of  his  head  showed  confidence  and  good  breed- 
ing, the  latter  not  belied  by  a  certain  untidiness  in  his  cloth- 
ing,—  the  untidiness  of  the  student  not  of  the  sloven. 

Bernard  on  his  side  was  also  making  observations,  less 
openly  perhaps  by  reason  of  the  conventions  in  which  he 
had  been  educated.  At  first  it  was  the  physical  perfection 
of  his  protege  that  attracted  his  admiration.  Then  he 
glanced  at  Stephen's  eyes  —  the  cold  steel-blue  eyes  of  the 
impersonal  thinker. 


A  MEETING  219 

"  A  baton  is  an  excellent  means  of  driving  home  the  logic 
of  a  case,  isn't  it?  "  he  said. 

"  It's  an  argument  which  can  only  be  answered  by  a 
reductio  ad  ashplant,"  replied  Stephen  .  .  . 

"  Holy  God !  "  exclaimed  the  paternal  proprietor  of  the 
Neptune  as  he  and  Bernard  assisted  Stephen  to  bed.  "  I'd 
have  the  tripes  out  o'  them  peelers,  so  I  would.  Every 
bloody  mother's  son  o'  them  .  .  .  them  an'  their  batons. 
.  .  .  Ah,  it's  a  quare  world,  glory  be  to  God !  " 

4 

Wlien  Bernard  arrived  at  the  Neptune  next  day  he  found 
Stephen  sitting  in  the  smoke-room  along  with  another  man, 
a  dark-haired  florid-complexioned  man  of  about  thirty, 
whom  Stephen  introduced  as  Mr.  McCall. 

"  Here's  a  man,"  said  the  latter,  speaking  with  a  slight 
Northern  accent,  "  who  expects  to  appeal  to  the  employers 
by  reason." 

Bernard  laughed. 

"Why  not?"  said  Stephen.  "The  arguments  used  on 
both  sides  in  this  controversy  have  seemed  to  me  stupid 
rather  than  malicious.  I  thought  there  was  room  for  a  little 
sound  reasoning  and  that's  whj  I  left  the  mountains  and 
came  to  Dublin." 

"  Well,"  said  McCall,  "  as  far  as  the  stupidity  of  the  argu- 
ments is  concerned  you're  right.  But  you  needn't  imagine 
that  the  people  who  use  them  are  stupid.  They  aren't. 
They  only  use  stupid  arguments  because  the  public  is  stupid, 
and  because,  owing  to  the  hypocrisy  of  modern  society, 
malicious  arguments  don't  pay.  I've  been  a  journalist  in 
my  time,  so  I  ought  to  know." 

"  But  surely  if  truth  and  reason  were  put  before  the 
public  ..." 

"  My  dear  sir,  the  public  doesn't  know  the  meaning  of 
the  words.  If  truth  and  reason  were  of  any  avail  the  strike 
would  have  been  settled  months  ago  by  A.E's  letter." 


220  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  The  fact  is,"  said  Bernard,  "  that  the  employers  mean 
to  smash  the  Transport  Workers'  Union  once  and  for  all, 
and  smash  it  they  will.  The  strikers  are  half-starved 
already  and  can't  last  much  longer." 

"  A  fight  by  an  isolated  section  is  bound  to  end  that  way," 
said  McCall,  "  and  I'm  not  really  sorry.  The  workers  will 
have  to  join  in  with  the  National  fight  now  and  make  their 
cause  a  part  of  it." 

"You're  an  Ulsterman,  aren't  you?"  said  Bernard. 
"  Well  there  are  a  few  questions  I  want  to  ask  you.  I'm  a 
recent  convert  to  Nationalism  and  there  are  a  few  difficulties 
I'm  always  running  up  against  in  controversy.  One  is  the 
question  '  If  Ireland's  poverty  is  due  to  British  government 
why  is  Ulster  so  prosperous?'  Can  you  explain  that?" 

"  Well,"  said  McCall,  "  the  best  answer  to  that  is  that  it's 
not  true.  Certain  individuals  in  Ulster  are  prosperous  but 
the  province  itself  isn't.  There's  worse  sweated  labour  in 
Belfast  than  in  Dublin,  and  worse  slums,  too.  You've  heard 
of  the  famous  linen  company  of  Addison  and  Monkhouse? 
Addison  himself  is  a  millionaire  and  a  political  boss,  but  do 
you  know  what  he  pays  his  workers?  Take  the  poor  old 
women  who  work  the  initials  on  the  handkerchiefs  he  sells 
at  fifteen  and  eighteen  shillings  the  dozen.  He  pays  them 
twopence  halfpenny  the  dozen,  and  it  takes  them  a  whole 
day  to  earn  it.  When  I  was  a  boy  I  served  my  time  in  a 
well  known  cardboard  box  factory  that  employed  a  couple 
of  hundred  .girls.  They  were  paid  according  to  the  amount 
of  work  they  got  through,  and  the  most  efficient  of  them 
could  only  manage  to  earn  about  nine  shillings  a  week.  Of 
course  the  average  was  much  lower  than  that.  .  .  .  Ulster 
prosperous!  Good  heavens,  Ulster's  population  is  dropping 
just  as  rapidly  as  Leinster's." 

"  So  I've  pointed  out.  But  people  said  that  was  an  ad- 
vantage as  it  left  more  wealth  to  those  who  remained 
behind." 

"  111  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 
Where  wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay." 


A  MEETING  221 

quoted  McCall.  "  But  I  wouldn't  be  surprised  if  the  dead 
hand  of  Whately  had  cut  those  lines  out  of  the  school 
editions." 

"Who  was  Whately?"  asked  Bernard. 

"  Whately  was  the  Protestant  Archbishop  who  dominated 
the  beautiful  educational  system  of  this  Catholic  country  a 
generation  ago.  His  job  was  to  knock  the  national  spirit 
out  of  the  children  and  if  he  failed  it  wasn't  his  fault.  First 
he  attacked  the  language.  Irish  was  forbidden  in  the  schools 
even  in  the  Irish  speaking  districts,  and  children  who  knew 
nothing  else  were  punished  for  using  it.  Then  he  took 
hold  of  the  reading-books  and  expurgated  them.  He 
knocked  out  every  reference  not  only  to  Irish  patriotism, 
mind  you,  but  to  patriotism  of  any  kind.  One  of  the  poems 
he  cut  out  was  Scott's  '  Breathes  there  the  man  with  soul 
so  dead  ?  '  Instead  of  it  he  inserted  this  touching  verse : 

I  thank  the  goodness  and  the  grace 

That  on  my  birth  have  smiled, 
And  made  me  in  these  Christian  days 

A  happy  English  child. 

Can  you  imagine  the  little  barefooted  Connacht  children 
reciting  that  drivel?  .  .  .  And  mind  you,  that  kind  of 
thing  is  going  on  still.  Only  five  years  ago  a  Protestant 
member  of  the  Board  of  Education  insisted  on  cutting  the 
line  '  Embrace  the  faithful  Crucifix '  out  of  Mangan's 
Lament  for  the  Princes.  Damn  it,  I'm  a  Protestant  myself, 
if  I'm  anything,  but  I'm  ashamed  of  my  Church." 

"  I've  never  been  in  Belfast,"  said  Bernard,  "  but  from 
all  I  hear  of  them  the  people  there  must  be  a  hard  bigoted 
lot." 

"  No,"  said  McCall.  "  They're  mad  and  ignorant  on 
politics  and  religion,  but  otherwise  they're  just  the  same  as 
the  rest  of  the  Irish, —  a  decent,  kind-hearted,  hospitable 
people.  Of  course  their  politics  are  absurd.  I  had  to  leave 
Belfast  on  that  account.  I  was  never  more  than  six  months 
in  a  job  before  they  found  out  I  was  a  Nationalist  and  gave 


222  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

me  the  sack.  And  the  whole  thing's  just  sheer  downright 
ignorance.  In  their  schools  they  never  learn  a  word  about 
their  own  country.  They  know  they're  Irish  and  not 
English  just  as  they  know  they're  male  and  not  female,  or 
vice  versa,  but  it's  a  matter  of  no  importance.  The  only 
history  they  learn  is  English  History  and  they  think  King 
William  founded  the  Orange  Order." 

"  Didn't  he  ?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  Not  he.  It  was  founded  in  1795  as  a  political  ex- 
pedient. I  once  told  an  Orangeman  that  and  he  wouldn't 
believe  me.  I  showed  it  to  him  in  a  book  and  he  wouldn't 
believe  the  book;  and  it  was  written  by  an  Orangeman. 
That's  the  Ulsterman  all  over.  He  knows  what's  so  and 
nothing  will  ever  convince  him  he's  wrong.  .  .  .  But  don't 
think  the  Ulsterman  is  loyal  to  England.  He  supports  the 
Union  because  he's  under  the  delusion  that  it  makes  Ulster 
prosperous.  If  he  ever  finds  out  his  mistake  —  and  some 
day  he  will  —  he'll  cut  the  cable  quicker  than  any  of  you. 
He's  a  business  man,  you  know,  and  sentiment  counts  for 
nothing  with  him." 

"  Th,e  Ulster  Volunteer  movement  shows  how  little  he 
cares  for  parliament,"  put  in  Bernard. 

"  Quite  so.  ...  Lord,  what  a  mess  the  Irish  party  have 
made  of  things.  Why  on  earth  didn't  they  set  out  to  con- 
vert Ulster  instead  of  the  English?  The  good  will  of  the 
English  doesn't  matter  a  damn,  whereas  a  united  Ireland 
could  bully  the  British  government  into  anything.  Instead 
of  that  they  went  abusing  their  possible  friends,  and  con- 
ciliating their  historic  enemy.  It'll  serve  them  right  if  they 
get  a  kick  up  the  backside  for  their  trouble." 

There  was  a  momentary  silence  and  then  Stephen  spoke. 

"  We've  one  thing  to  be  grateful  to  Ulster  for  anyway," 
he  said.  "  They've  demonstrated  a  possibility." 

"  What's  that?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  Volunteering  is  a  game  that  two  can  play  at." 

"  Begad!  "  said  McCall,  "  I  wonder  we  never  thought  of 
that  before," 


A  MEETING  223 

"  I've  thought  for  years,"  said  Stephen,  "  over  the  solution 
of  our  dilemma.  Physical  force  has  failed  every  time,  and 
its  failure  becomes  more  and  more  certain  as  year  by  year 
makes  England  stronger  and  Ireland  weaker.  On  the  other 
hand,  Constitutionalism  is  illogical,  demoralizing  and  futile. 
Failure  is  written  all  over  the  present  Party.  A  little  more 
stiffening  on  the  part  of  the  Volunteers  and  the  Liberals 
will  climb  down.  .  .  .  Well,  what  remains  for  us?  Why 
not  a  mixture  of  the  two  methods.  Leave  the  Party  to 
blither  at  Westminster  and  raise  an  army  of  Volunteers 
here  to  show  we  mean  business." 

"  Great  scheme !  "  ejaculated  McCall. 

"  Then,"  said  Stephen,  "  Volunteers  will  come  in  useful 
in  the  not  very  distant  future,  when  ...  I  suppose  you'll 
agree  that  a  European  war  is  inevitable  sooner  or  later?  " 

"  I  doubt  it,"  said  Bernard.  "  Civilization's  got  beyond 
that." 

"Has  it?"  sniffed  McCall.  "I  give  Europe  five  years 
more  of  peace,  and  then " 

"  I  give  her  less,"  said  Stephen.  "  Well,  if  the  war  comes 
before  Home  Rule,  the  Volunteers  can  extract  some  pretty 
strong  measure  of  self-government  right  at  the  start.  And 
if  Home  Rule  comes  first,  the  Volunteers  will  be  there  to 
extract  a  few  more  of  our  rights,  and  perhaps  to  maintain 
our  neutrality." 

"You're  a  statesman,"  said  McCall. 

"Pooh I  That's  common  sense.  I  wonder  no  one  else 
thought  of  it.  I  came  to  Dublin  in  order  to  get  hold  of 
people  well  enough  known  to  father  the  scheme." 

"  The  Party  won't  cotton  on  to  it,"  said  McCall. 
"  They're  tied  hand  and  foot  to  the  Liberals.  I  wouldn't 
be  surprised  if  they  even  denounced  it." 

"  I  never  even  thought  of  the  Party,"  said  Stephen. 
"  The  people  I  want  to  get  in  touch  with  are  the  Gaelic 
Leaguers.  They've  more  grip  on  reality  than  any  poli- 
ticians." 

"  Well,    I   can   introduce  you   to  some   of   them,"   said 


224  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

McCall,    and    they    set    to    discussing    ways    and    means. 

Shortly  after  Bernard  took  his  leave. 

"  I  shan't  see  you  again  for  a  fortnight  or  so,"  he  said. 
"  I'm  running  over  to  England  on  a  visit  to  a  friend  of 
mine.  .  .  .  He's  a  candidate  in  this  Deeping  Bye-Election, 
and  a  damn  decent  fellow  and  very  friendly  to  Ireland 
though  he's  a  Tory.  I'll  put  him  in  touch  with  some  of  the 
facts  of  the  situation  and  see  how  they  go  down  with  the 
English  electorate." 

"  These  honest  amiable  philo-Irish  Englishmen,"  said 
McCall,  "  are  more  dangerous  enemies  to  us  than  the  other 
kind,  for  they  don't  really  count  in  English  politics  and 
we're  apt  to  soften  our  attitude  to  suit  them." 

"  I  think  Willoughby  will  count  some  day,"  said  Bernard. 
"  Well,  I'll  be  off.  See  you  again  in  a  fortnight.  .  .  .  Take 
care  of  that  head  of  yours,  Ward." 

5 

On  a  mellow  evening  in  September  Bernard  arrived  at 
Deeping.  Willoughby  met  him  at  the  station.  Four  years 
had  made  little  alteration  in  their  appearances:  if  anything 
Willoughby  had  aged  rather  more  than  Bernard,  and  he  was 
actually  the  elder  by  a  year.  They  had  much  to  talk  about 
on  the  drive  to  the  Towers,  for  neither  cared  much  about 
letter  writing. 

"  The  first  thing  I've  got  to  tell  you,"  said  Willoughby, 
"  is  that  I'm  engaged  to  be  married." 

"  My  dear  chap,  I  congratulate  you.  Why  didn't  you 
tell  me  before?  " 

"  It  only  happened  a  month  ago,  so  I  thought  I'd  keep 
the  news  until  you  came.  .  .  .  Do  you  remember  a  Miss 
Morecambe  who  was  staying  with  us  when  you  were  here? 
It's  her  sister.  They're  both  on  a  visit  at  the  Towers  at 
present." 

"  And  how's  Mrs.  Slitherly?  " 

"  Maud's  very  well.  .  .  .  Second  son  arrived  six  weeks 
ago." 


A  MEETING  225 

"  Have  you  heard  anything  of  your  old  friend  Murray?  " 

"  Not  a  word  for  ages.  He  did  brilliantly  at  Oxford, 
but  he  only  wrote  to  me  once  since  he  left,  and  that's  nearly 
a  year  ago.  .  .  .  We  did  miss  you  in  our  little  set.  Rotten 
luck  I  call  it." 

They  talked  for  a  while  about  the  careers  of  various 
schoolfellows,  but  eventually  Willoughby  harked  back  to 
the  subject  that  is  always  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  young 
lovers. 

"  No,"  said  Bernard  in  reply  to  a  feeler,  "  I've  been  into 
love,  through  it,  and  out  at  the  other  end  dozens  of  times. 
The  woman  doesn't  live  that  I  could  be  faithful  to." 

"  Nonsense,"  objected  Willoughby.  "  You'll  meet  your 
fate  some  day,  and  be  worse  than  any  of  us.  That's  what 
always  happens  to  your  sort." 

"  I  hope  not,"  said  Bernard.  "  I've  more  important 
things  to  bother  about.  How's  the  election  going?  " 

"  I  haven't  the  ghost  of  a  chance,  I'm  afraid.  You  see, 
the  Tory  push  wouldn't  have  me  as  I  wasn't  true-blue  on 
the  Irish  question, —  and  a  couple  of  others  as  well;  so  I'm 
going  up  as  an  Independent.  It'll  be  a  three-cornered  fight. 
Do  you  remember  Frank's  friend  Hastings?  He's  the  Lib- 
eral candidate,  and  the  Unionist  is  a  crusty  old  soldier  — 
Major  Allardyce.  It's  between  those  two  really.  I'm  too 
young  to  catch  votes  and  my  views  don't  seem  to  go  down 
somehow." 

"  We  must  have  a  talk  about  that  later  on.  I've  heard 
and  read  nothing  but  Irish  politics  for  the  last  three  years 
and  I  haven't  an  idea  what's  been  happening  over  here." 

They  swept  along  by  highway,  by-way,  Roman  Road  and 
cedar-bordered  avenue  to  the  well  remembered  entry  to 
Willoughby  Towers.  Everything  was  the  same  as  on  Ber- 
nard's previous  visit  four  years  ago:  a  picture  of  unchang- 
ing prosperity.  The  squire's  welcome  was  as  hearty,  his 
wife's  as  frigid  as  on  the  former  occasion.  The  two  Miss 
Morecambes  came  down  to  the  drawing-room  dressed  for 
dinner.  Bernard's  attention  was  entirely  occupied  by  Wil- 


226  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

loughby's  fiancee,  Dorothy,  who  was  fair,  graceful,  and  ex- 
tremely pretty,  that  at  the  salutation  with  which  he  greeted 
her  sister  was  of  the  most  perfunctory  nature.  Dorothy 
though  pretty,  was  no  doll,  and  Bernard  highly  approved 
his  friend's  choice,  a  fact  which  he  communicated  to  him 
in  a  whisper  as  they  moved  in  to  dinner. 

"  Have  you  ever  been  back  to  Ashbury?  "  Bernard  asked 
Willoughby  during  the  course  of  the  meal. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Willoughby.  "  I  go  there  every  year  for 
the  Easter  retreat.  .  .  .  You're  not  at  all  popular  there, 
you  know,  ever  since  that  article  of  yours  on  the  morals  of 
Public  Schools." 

"  What  did  they  object  to  in  it?  " 

"  They  objected  to  it  altogether.  In  the  first  place,  they 
said,  even  if  it  was  a  true  statement  you'd  no  business  to 
make  it,  and  in  the  second  place  they  said  it  wasn't  true." 

"  Just  what  they  would  say.  If  a  person  who  has  first 
hand  experience  isn't  entitled  to  speak,  who  is?" 

"  They  call  it  lack  of  esprit-de-corps  ..." 

"  I  suppose  they'd  prefer  to  leave  the  question  to  be 
thrashed  out  in  the  mawkish  pages  of  John  Bull.  Well, 
if  they  don't  like  me  they  can  lump  me." 

"  Are  things  really  as  bad  as  you  say?  "  asked  the  Squire. 

"  What  things?  "  asked  Dorothy  innocently,  whereat  Mrs. 
Willoughby  cut  into  the  conversation  with  some  incisive  re- 
marks about  the  weather,  giving  the  while  an  angry  glance 
at  her  son  for  having  introduced  so  unfortunate  a  topic. 

Then  the  squire  began  gently  to  chaff  Jack  about  his  po- 
litical speeches  and  about  Tory  democracy  in  general. 

"  Jack  thinks  it  a  good  compromise  between  Toryism  and 
democracy  to  take  up  both,"  he  said  to  Bernard. 

"  You  talk  as  if  they  were  opposites,"  objected  Willoughby. 

"  So  they  are,  my  boy.  In  my  father's  time  all  true  Tories 
held  the  very  name  of  democrat  in  horror.  You  might  as 
well  talk  of  a  Christian  Atheist  as  a  Tory  democrat. 

"  If  I  thought  that,"  said  Willoughby,  "  I  should  cease 
to  be  a  Tory." 


A  MEETING  227 

"  So  you  have,  except  in  name." 

"  Look  here,  father,  can  you  not  conceive  a  democracy  of 
gentlemen?  That's  what  they  have  in  Ireland." 

"In  Ireland!"  interrupted  Mrs.  Willoughby.  "What 
nonsense  you're  talking,  Jack.  Ireland's  a  country  of  small 
farmers,  cattle  drivers,  and  murderers." 

"Mother!"  exclaimed  Willoughby.  "Remember  Mr. 
Lascelles." 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Lascelles  knows  what  I  mean.  The  Irish 
upper  classes  are  different.  I  don't  really  count  them  as 
Irish.  They're  mostly  of  English  descent,  aren't  they,  Mr. 
Lascelles?  " 

"  I  don't  think  we  bother  much  about  our  descent,"  said 
Bernard.  "  I'm  Irish,  and  as  for  our  being  murderers,  if 
any  one  came  to  put  you  out  of  Willoughby  Towers  because 
they  wanted  the  site  to  graze  cattle  on,  I  think  it  wouldn't 
be  long  before  you  took  up  a  gun  yourself." 

"  We're  not  tenants,  you  know,"  said  Mrs.  Willoughby, 
looking  haughtily  along  her  beautiful  nose.  "  Willoughby 
Towers  is  our  own." 

"  My  dear  madam,"  said  Bernard,  aggressive  in  his  turn, 
"  before  England  was  ever  heard  of  the  O'Neills  were  lords 
in  Tir  Owen." 

This  retort  produced  silence,  for  the  point  of  it  was  utterly 
lost  on  its  hearers.  The  altercation  had  introduced  a  cer- 
tain embarrassment  into  the  atmosphere,  which  Willoughby 
hastened  to  allay. 

"  You've  picked  up  the  deuce  of  an  Irish  brogue,  Bernard, 
these  last  few  years,"  he  remarked. 

"  In  Dublin,"  replied  Bernard,  "  I'm  perpetually  chaffed 
about  my  English  accent.  I  wonder  what  sort  of  accent  I 
have  in  reality." 

"  The  most  charming  brogue  I  ever  heard,"  asserted 
Dorothy.  "  What  do  you  think,  Janet?  " 

Janet  regarded  Bernard  whimsically  a  moment. 

"  You've  a  distinctly  Dublin  accent,"  she  said. 

"  You  speak  daggers  to  me,"  laughed  Bernard. 


228  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Dorothy's  never  been  in  Ireland,"  said  Janet.  "  She 
thinks  it's  an  island  near  Killarney  where  the  people  wear 
red  petticoats  and  caubeens  and  keep  pigs  as  pets  and  shoot 
each  other  with  shillelaghs." 

"  Janet  stayed  in  Connemara  for  a  month  once,"  said 
Dorothy,  "  so  she  thinks  she's  a  great  authority.  Have  you 
a  shillelagh,  Mr.  Lascelles?" 

"  Yes.  Five  or  six.  I  use  them  to  drive  the  pigs  to 
market." 

"  How  lovely!  "  exclaimed  Dorothy.  "  I  should  so  love 
to  have  one." 

"  I'll  send  you  one  for  a  wedding  present,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Oh,  do !  ...  And,  do  you  know,  Jack  wants  to  spend 
the  honeymoon  in  Ireland.  Do  you  think  I  ought  to 
agree?  " 

"  Certainly.     But  make  him  bring  a  revolver." 

Dorothy  gasped.     But  here  Janet  interposed. 

"  Don't  mind  him.  He's  only  '  taking  the  cod  of  you,'  as 
they  say  in  Ireland.  You're  a  regular  stage  Irishman,  Mr. 
Lascelles." 

"  Can't  help  it,  Miss  Morecambe,"  Bernard  sighed. 
"  You  see,  I'm  on  the  Irishman's  favourite  stage." 

"What's  that?"  asked  Dorothy. 

"  England,"  said  Bernard. 

6 

To  leave  the  lovers  alone  together  Janet  took  Bernard  for 
a  stroll  in  the  garden. 

"  It  was  a  good  deed,"  said  Janet,  "  to  answer  Mrs. 
Willoughby  the  way  you  did  .  .  .  even  though  she  is  our 
hostess.  What  was  the  point  of  what  you  said  about 
Tyrone?  " 

"  Irish  landlordism  only  dates  from  the  English  conquest. 
There  were  no  owners  of  the  soil  in  ancient  Ireland.  The 
chieftains  were  just  leaders  of  the  people,  who  owned  the 
land  in  common.  That  was  the  only  thing  in  the  old  Gaelic 
system  that  appeals  to  me." 


A  MEETING  229 

"  So  you've  been  reading  your  history  since  we  last  met? 
It's  altered  your  outlook,  I'm  sure." 

"  Yes,  I'm  a  convinced  Nationalist  now,  and  ruthless 
logic  has  driven  me  to  believe  in  the  necessity  of  Separation. 
.  .  .  You  English,  I  think,  picture  an  Irish  revolutionary 
as  a  dreamy  idealist  sentimentalizing  over  a  green  flag.  So 
did  I  at  one  time.  But  nothing  would  be  further  from  the 
truth.  Anything  harder,  colder,  or  more  practical  than  the 
young  Nationalists  who  are  responsible  for  any  conversion 
you  couldn't  imagine.  The  real  sentimentalists  are  those 
ardent  Home  Rulers  like  Murray  —  do  you  remember  him? 
—  who  believe  in  the  goodwill  of  England  and  expect  jus- 
tice from  her.  ...  I  hope  you  don't  mind  such  plain 
speaking?  " 

"  Oh,  no.  I  know  what  our  politicians  are  like,  and  it's 
they  who  run  our  policy." 

"  Well,  as  I  say,  I'm  logically  convinced,  but  I  can't  help 
a  feeling  that  the  cause  is  rather  a  small  one.  ...  I  wish  I 
could  explain  myself.  .  .  .  You  see,  all  my  enthusiasms 
are  for  mankind  as  a  whole.  Since  first  I  could  think  I've 
thought  in  terms  of  the  world,  and  I've  a  feeling  that  it's  a 
narrowing,  strangling  thing  to  get  caught  up  in  an  obscure 
local  squabble.  ...  I've  a  sort  of  fear  of  losing  sight  of 
the  big  human  issue  and  getting  stained  in  the  muck  of 
party  politics.  For  it  is  a  muck  in  spite  of  all  the  fine  ideals 
of  some  of  the  fighters.  ...  If  you  could  hear  some  of  the 
speeches  I've  heard.  .  .  .  Then  the  cause  doesn't  grip  me 
very  vitally.  I  feel  to  it  rather  like  a  sympathetic  out- 
sider. 

"  When  I  first  read  Irish  history  the  tragedy  and  in- 
justice of  it  filled  me  with  wild  emotions  and  resolves. 
But  they  had  no  roots.  I  feel  that  this  is  only  one  of  a 
thousand  tragedies  and  it  has  no  more  motive  power  for  me 
than  any  of  the  others.  ...  It  isn't  vital  to  my  being  like 
the  great  ideas,  Republicanism  or  Socialism.  .  .  .  The  Mar- 
seillaise means  more  to  me,  if  you  understand,  than  A  Na- 
tion Once  Again.  A  couple  of  bars  of  the  Marseillaise  is 


230  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

enough  to  set  my  heart  throbbing  and  my  nerves  thrilling, 
whereas  the  other  —  it's  just  a  song." 

"  Then  you  don't  .  .  .  love  Ireland?  " 

"  I  confess  I  don't  see  much  to  love  in  her.  I  can't  stand 
my  countrymen  at  all.  .  .  .  They're  shiftless,  inefficient, 
not  very  honest,  not  very  clean,  very  thin-skinned  and  down- 
right intolerant  of  criticism.  They  never  keep  appoint- 
ments, they  talk  a  great  deal  too  much,  they're  insincere,  and 
they're  damnably  shallowly  clever.  Why,  their  very  virtues 
are  only  the  reverse  side  of  their  vices.  People  praise  their 
unworldliness  and  indifference  to  material  gain:  it's  just 
part  of  their  shiftlessness.  They've  a  reputation  for  cour- 
tesy, but  it's  only  part  of  their  insincerity.  And  as  for  their 
charm  and  hospitality,  as  soon  as  the  stranger  has  turned  his 
back  they're  laughing  at  him  and  abusing  him." 

"  They  have  the  softest  voices  in  the  world,"  put  in  Janet. 
"  So  different  from  our  strident  screeching." 

"  Maybe  so,"  said  Bernard.  "  I  don't  like  them  all  the 
same.  ...  So  much  for  my  people.  As  for  the  country 
—  well,  you  can  get  beautiful  scenery  anywhere,  and  I  don't 
think  ours  very  great  shakes  anyhow." 

Janet  laughed  lightly. 

"  You  don't  understand  the  merest  A.B.C.  of  patriotism," 
she  said.  "  Do  you  think  I  don't  love  England  because  I 
hate  her  oppression  of  other  countries?  Because  if  you  do, 
you're  wrong. 

If  England  was  what  England  seems, 
And  not  the  England  of  our  dreams, 
But  only  putty,  brass  and  paint, 
How  quick  we'd  chuck  'er —  But  she  ain't. 

The  man  who  wrote  that  is  a  professional  patriotic  rhapso- 
diser,  but  he's  as  ignorant  of  the  first  principles  of  patriotism 
as  you  are." 

"  I'm  still  in  the  dark,"  said  Bernard.  "  I  may  be  de- 
ficient in  patriotism,  but  whatever  the  reason  may  be,  while 


A  MEETING  231 

I'm  firmly  convinced  of  the  righteousness  of  the  cause  I 
feel  no  overwhelming  desire  for  action." 

"  I'm  afraid  I  must  leave  it  to  nature  to  help  you  out," 
replied  Janet. 

They  talked  for  a  while  on  various  topics.  Janet's  social 
work,  Bernard's  August  reading,  and  the  labour  crisis  in 
Dublin  were  the  chief. 

"  That's  what  the  papers  called  a  riot,"  said  Janet,  when 
Bernard  had  described  the  famous  baton  charge.  "  Good 
heavens,  it's  .  .  ."  she  paused  for  words  but  failed  to  find 
them,  ".  .  .  it's  unspeakable,"  she  added  lamely.  Her  eyes 
shone  and  her  voice  shook  with  indignation.  For  a  mo- 
ment she  was  almost  beautiful. 

There  was  silence  between  them  for  a  while.  This  girl 
troubled  the  very  depths  of  Bernard's  soul.  His  mind 
leaped  responsively  to  hers,  and  he  was  conscious  of  a  re- 
ciprocal movement  of  hers  to  his.  And  now  he  was  aware 
of  an  unfamiliar  feeling  of  contentment  in  being  with  her, 
and  as  they  walked  in  the  ever  deepening  darkness  among 
the  cedars  he  gave  himself  up  to  the  enjoyment  of  this  sen- 
sation. For  many  minutes  the  crunching  of  gravel  beneath 
their  feet  was  all  that  disturbed  the  delicious  silence  .  .  . 

Then  he  turned  to  look  at  her  and  the  spell  was  broken. 
The  primitive  savage  in  him  hungered  for  physical  beauty, 
and  while  all  that  was  fine  and  civilized  and  cultivated  in 
him  cursed  him  for  a  shallow  sensual  fool  the  primitive 
savage  won  the  day.  A  hard,  brutal  desire  to  wound  that 
which  troubled  him  thrust  itself  uppermost  in  his  conscious- 
ness. 

"Jack  and  Dorothy  seem  very  happy,"  said  Janet:  an 
indication  of  the  way  her  thoughts  had  run. 

"  I  don't  envy  them,"  said  Bernard.  "  I  distrust  and  fear 
happiness.  ...  I  never  see  a  happily  married  couple  —  es- 
pecially an  elderly  couple  —  but  I  thank  God  I  am  not  such 
as  they." 

"  Why?  "  asked  Janet,  a  touch  of  alarm  in  her  voice. 


232  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  I  think  happiness  is  demoralizing.  Also  I  think  it's  an 
accident.  We  weren't  put  here  to  be  happy  but  to  work. 
Happiness  this  side  of  the  grave  is  a  fraud  and  a  snare,  and 
when  you  die  your  little  smiling  heaven  dies  with  you. 
Leave  happiness  to  cats;  man  has  for  ever:  that's  my  motto, 
if  I  may  misquote  Browning." 

"  You  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about,"  said  Janet. 
Then,  rather  timidly,  "  Have  you  ever  been  in  love?  " 

"  Too  often.  That's  the  trouble.  I've  gathered  roses 
and  they've  turned  to  dandelions  or  nettles  in  my  hand." 

Janet  laughed  at  his  tragic  tone,  a  pleasant,  tinkling  laugh 
peculiar  to  herself,  and  said: 

"  You  talk  like  a  disillusioned  old  rascal  of  fifty,  and  I 
don't  suppose  you're  twenty-four  yet." 

"  I've  no  use  for  love,"  said  Bernard.  "  A  man  in  love 
is  a  pathetic  idiot,  and  a  girl  in  love  is  simply  cloying." 

"Mr.  Lascelles!"  Janet  gasped.  "I  don't  think  you 
realize  what  you're  saying.  .  .  .  You're  .  .  .  Oh,  you're  .  .  ." 

She  turned  away  from  him  abruptly  and  fled.  Bernard 
stood  staring  stupidly  after  her  for  a  moment,  feeling  a  kind 
of  gloomy  satisfaction. 

"  Lord!  "  he  muttered.     "  I've  done  it  now." 

7 

"  Of  course,"  said  Willoughby,  "  I'll  go  on  with  it  to  the 
end,  but  I  haven't  a  dog's  chance.  My  views  don't  go  down 
somehow.  .  .  .  You  see,  the  British  electorate  are  a  lot  of 
children.  They  want  their  politics  to  be  either  amusing 
or  exciting.  They  certainly  don't  want  them  to  be  serious. 
.  .  .  Perhaps  I'm  a  bit  of  a  proser,  but  when  I  talk  of  an 
enlightened  British  Democracy  with  a  great  destiny  of  con- 
struction and  education  before  it  they  simply  yawn.  That's 
not  their  notion  of  politics.  They  don't  care  about  con- 
struction or  education.  They  want  a  sort  of  Punch  and 
Judy  show,  with  comic  papers  for  programs.  .  .  .  And  their 
notion  of  a  political  speech  is  a  string  of  humorous  or  bitter 
attacks  on  one's  opponent  mixed  up  with  gross  flatteries  of 


A  MEETING  233 

themselves.  Hastings  and  Allardyce  are  what  they  like. 
Hastings  tells  funny  stories  about  the  other  side,  paints  Bonar 
Law  as  a  harmless  ass,  Balfour  as  a  doting  old  villain,  and 
Allardyce  as  their  tool.  And  he  talks  about  Asquith  and 
Lloyd  George  as  if  they  were  compounds  of  Solomon  and 
Good  King  Wenceslaus  with  a  touch  of  John  Hampden 
thrown  in.  As  for  Allardyce,  he  just  calls  Asquith  a  traitor, 
Lloyd  George  a  thief,  and  Redmond  a  rebel,  and  calls  upon 
Old  England  to  remain  always  Old  England.  .  .  .  You 
should  hear  the  cheers  those  two  can  raise  .  .  ." 

"  My  dear  Willoughby,"  said  Bernard,  "  all  this  simply 
goes  to  prove  that  your  ideas  about  England  are  sheer  rub- 
bish. How  can  you  expect  a  democracy  like  that  to  lead  the 
world?  What  right  have  they  to  an  Empire  about  whose 
geography  they  know  damn  little  and  about  the  people  less? 
The  only  thing  that  seems  to  impress  them  in  the  whole 
affair  is  its  size,  and  they're  not  even  sure  of  that.  All  they 
know  is  that  it's  bigger  than  any  other  Empire." 

But  Willoughby's  belief  in  his  ideas  and  in  their  prac- 
ticability was  unshaken.  Throughout  the  next  few  days  he 
pursued  his  canvassing  and  oratorical  course  as  vigorously 
as  ever. 

On  the  evening  before  polling  day  the  squire  motored  his 
guests  in  to  Deeping  "  to  see  the  fun."  Threading  their 
way  slowly  and  with  great  difficulty  through  the  crowds 
they  passed  close  to  the  platform  from  which  the  Liberal 
candidate  was  addressing  his  supporters.  Hastings  had  al- 
tered considerably  in  appearance  since  Bernard  had  seen  him 
last.  His  figure  verged  on  the  middle  aged,  and  there  was 
a  laughable  suggestion  of  Broadbent  about  his  attitude. 

"  There  is  a  well-known  story,"  he  was  saying,  "  which, 
however  well  known,  I  feel  justified  in  repeating  because  of 
its  remarkable  aptness  in  the  present  political  position.  I 
refer  to  the  story  of  the  gentleman  who  met  one  day  on  a 
road  a  small  party  of  workers  followed  at  some  distance  by 
a  solitary  man,  very  tired  and  anxious  and  having  obvious 
difficulty  in  keeping  up  the  pace.  '  Why,'  asked  the  gentle- 


234  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

man,  '  are  you  following  these  men?  '  '  I  must  follow  them/ 
replied  the  other  in  plaintive  accents,  '  because  I'm  their 
leader.'  "  (Loud  laughter.)  "  Mr.  Bonar  Law,"  resumed 
Hastings,  "seems  to  be  in  a  similar  plight."  (Laughter.) 
"  He  is  the  leader  of  a  party,  but  .  .  ." 

Here  the  motor,  being  clear  of  the  crowd,  took  a  spurt 
forward  and  the  rest  of  the  sentence  was  lost.  Almost 
immediately  they  ran  into  Allardyce's  audience  and  caught 
a  few  sentences  as  they  passed. 

".  .  .  In  the  House  no  doubt  they  profess  loyalty,  or 
what  they  choose  to  call  loyalty,  but  the  motto  of  their 
followers  is  '  Ireland  for  the  Irish.'  "  (Groans.) 

"  There's  Redmond's  '  Great  Heart  of  the  British  De- 
mocracy '  for  you,"  said  Bernard  to  Janet. 

She  agreed  with  him  listlessly.  She  spoke  to  him  but 
seldom  now  and  never  on  her  own  initiative.  He  had  long 
wanted  to  recall  the  cruel  words  of  that  first  evening  but  did 
not  know  how  to  begin,  and  with  the  lapse  of  time  the 
difficulty  increased. 

They  reached  Willoughby's  committee  rooms  and  found 
him  inside  with  his  dispirited  agents  and  friends. 

"Hello,  Jack,  why  aren't  you  out  speechifying?"  asked 
the  squire. 

Willoughby  grinned  helplessly. 

"  No  good,"  he  said.  "  Couldn't  get  a  crowd.  Let's  go 
home." 

Polling  day  came  and  went,  and  in  the  evening  Deeping 
was  a  seething,  shouting  mass  of  people  waiting  for  the  re- 
sult. It  came  at  last.  Hastings  was  in  by  over  eight  hun- 
dred votes.  Willoughby's  total  poll  was  seven  hundred  and 
sixty-nine. 

"  Well,"  said  Janet,  "  that's  something.  Seven  hundred 
enlightened  people  in  a  county  division  is  a  good  deal." 

"  Not  in  the  circumstances,"  said  Willoughby  grimly. 
"  At  least  half  of  them  are  villagers  who  voted  for  t'  Squire's 
son,  and  half  the  remainder  are  disgruntled  Tories  who 
don't  care  for  Bonar  Law." 


A  MEETING  235 

Cheer  upon  cheer  burst  from  the  crowd  as  the  results 
were  announced.  Then  there  were  cries  of  "  Speech ! 
Speech !  "  and  Hastings  went  out  on  to  the  balcony  to  ad- 
dress his  constituents.  There  was  a  crescendo  of  cheers  and 
boohs,  and  as  they  died  down  scattered  female  voices  cried 
"  Votes  for  Women."  Then  there  was  a  momentary  silence. 

"  Gentlemen  .  .  ."   began   Hastings. 

"  Votes  for  Women !  " 

The  persistent  female  voice  was  drowned  by  hoarse  shouts 
of  hostility.  "Put  her  out!  G-r-r!  " 

"  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  I 
thank  you  for  the  honour  you  have  done  me.  I  am  going 
to  Westminster  to  assist  in  furthering  the  great  measures  of 
the  Liberal  Government  for  increasing  our  constitutional 
liberties  .  .  ." 

"  Votes  for  women !  " 

"  Practise  what  you  preach !  " 

So  it  went  on,  the  meaningless  speech  and  its  meaningless 
interruptions,  and  in  the  end  the  squire  and  his  party  drove 
home  through  the  mob  that  howled  and  sang  and  waved 
torches  late  into  the  night. 

"  Never  mind,"  said  Bernard  to  Willoughby.  "  Politics 
doesn't  consist  in  sitting  at  Westminster  in  a  silk  hat.  .  .  . 
The  pen  may  or  may  not  be  mightier  than  the  sword,  but 
it's  certainly  mightier  than  the  voice  of  a  non-party  back- 
bencher." 

"  By  Jove,  I  must  think  about  that,"  said  Willoughby. 


Bernard  returned  to  Dublin  in  October  and  at  the  first 
opportunity  called  at  the  Hotel  Neptune.  Stephen,  however, 
was  out,  and  McCall  had  gone  the  way  of  all  commercial 
travellers.  Bernard  called  again  twice,  but  each  time 
Stephen  was  away,  and  the  proprietor  informed  him  that  he 
was  very  busy  and  seldom  appeared  even  at  meal  time. 

The  last  occasion  was  a  Saturday  afternoon  and  Bernard 
found  himself  with  nothing  to  do.  McGurk  and  Crowley 


236  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  Moore  were  out  of  town,  and  O'Dwyer  when  tele- 
phoned for  was  not  to  be  found.  So  Bernard  took  his  bicycle 
and  rode  out  through  Terenure  and  Rathfarnham  along  the 
Glencree  road.  Reaching  the  stiff  slope  leading  to  Feather- 
bed pass  he  was  forced  to  dismount  and  walk.  Half  way 
up  the  hill  he  halted  and  sat  down  by  the  roadside  to 
smoke. 

He  fell  presently  into  a  reverie,  wondering  at  his  strangely 
inconsistent  attitude  towards  the  vital  necessities  of  his  coun- 
try. Why  this  intense  logical  conviction  unaccompanied  by 
any  desire  to  act?  This  was  the  question  that  puzzled 
and  dismayed  him.  He  knew  many  young  men  who  as  far 
as  conviction  went  held  views  as  strong  as  his  own  and  had 
held  them  long  before  he  had.  These  men  also,  able  and 
intelligent  as  they  were,  felt  no  impulse  to  act.  Was  he  cast 
in  their  mould?  He  hoped  not,  because  with  all  their  abili- 
ties and  good  qualities  he  rather  despised  them.  One  in 
particular  occurred  to  his  mind,  a  young  barrister  called 
Kennedy,  who  protested  himself  a  strong  Separatist  but 
took  no  steps  towards  joining  any  Separatist  organization, 
and,  though  he  could  write  admirably,  never  wrote  a  line 
for  any  Separatist  paper.  Was  he,  Bernard,  like  Kennedy? 
No.  For  Kennedy  was  one  of  those  who  would  have  re- 
sented any  suggestion  of  action  being  required  of  him, 
whereas  Bernard's  inaction  caused  him  acute  uneasiness.  .  .  . 
Moore  also  thought  right  and  took  no  action.  But  that  was 
because  of  his  vile  philosophy.  .  .  .  An  echo  of  his  first 
conversation  with  Moore  recurred  to  him.  "  A  man  without 
a  country.  A  cleruch." 

"By  Jove,  yes!  I'm  a  member  of  the  garrison.  A 
seoinin.  A  West  Briton.  .  .  .  Yet  I  feel  no  loyalty  to 
England.  Loyalty!  Already  I  hate  her  as  much  as 
O'Dwyer  does.  What's  wrong  with  me  at  all  ?  " 

He  gave  up  the  problem  and  resumed  the  climb.  He 
emerged  at  last  on  an  open  space  where  the  road  divided 
into  two.  One  branch  went  winding  back  through  rusting 
woodland  to  the  plain  beneath.  The  other  curved  over 


A  MEETING  237 

heathery  bog  to  disappear  in  the  mist  among  the  looming 
purple  mountains.  Here  on  a  shelf  as  it  were  between  the 
hills  and  the  sea  he  paused  to  take  breath  leaning  over  his 
bicycle.  The  fresh  damp  autumn  breeze  fanned  his  cheek; 
autumn  tints  were  in  the  landscape  and  autumn  grey  was 
in  the  sky.  Bernard  looked  around  the  scene  with  an  admir- 
ing eye.  The  panorama  of  mountain,  waste  land,  wood 
and  farmland  made  an  instant  appeal  to  his  sense  of  beauty. 
He  turned  from  the  mist  haze  on  the  hills  to  the  smoke  haze 
hanging  over  the  city  dim  and  distant  in  the  plain,  and  then 
out  again  to  the  grey  mystery  of  the  sea.  .  .  .  And  sud- 
denly the  feeling  inspired  by  sheer  beauty  gave  place  to  a 
new  unnameable  feeling  that  sprang  into  being  with  inex- 
plicable suddenness,  a  feeling  of  ownership  and  yet  of  serv- 
ice, of  intimacy  and  yet  of  homage;  and  on  that  instant  he 
loved  the  hills  and  the  forests  and  the  plain  and  the  city 
itself  and  the  whole  wide  horizon  with  a  love  incomparable 
to  any  human  love  save  perhaps  that  of  a  son  for  his  mother. 
It  was  the  birth  of  patriotism. 

In  that  moment  all  doubts  were  solved  and  he  saw  his 
position  as  clear  as  day.  A  well-worn  proverb  which  in 
the  arrogance  of  his  cleverness  he  had  long  despised  flashed 
before  him  now  pregnant  with  meaning.  "  Charity  begins 
at  home."  Slowly  he  began  to  realize  the  lonely  ineptitude 
of  his  philosophical  position.  He  had  feared  to  cut  himself 
off  from  the  world  by  serving  Ireland;  now  he  saw  that 
only  in  her  service  could  he  come  in  contact  with  the  world. 
Alone  he  could  achieve  nothing,  but  with  a  liberated  and 
regenerated  homeland  for  a  model  what  precepts  could  he 
not  demonstrate  to  men?  Ireland  as  Ireland  might  yet 
have  a  place  in  the  world's  councils;  might  eventually  lead 
them:  Ireland  as  West  Britain  could  have  none.  The 
great  world-thinkers  of  other  lands  had  not,  after  all,  neg- 
lected their  own  countries.  They  had  not  been  less  na- 
tional for  being  international,  less  international  for  being 
national.  France  by  her  Revolution  had  re-made  the  world, 
but  her  revolutionists  had  arisen  for  France.  Germany  by 


238  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

her  scientific  work  had  become  the  school  of  Europe,  but  it 
was  in  developing  herself  that  she  had  become  so. 

And  Ireland  set  free  would  have  her  mission  too.  Even 
now  in  her  subjection  the  germs  of  her  genius  could  be  seen. 
Her  polity  would  aim  at  combining  the  maximum  of  personal 
liberty  with  the  minimum  of  individual  licence,  the  maximum 
of  public  good  with  the  minimum  of  private  restraint.  She 
would  be  a  land  of  courtesy  and  hospitality  free  from  the 
curse  of  commercialism,  and  she  would  show  the  nations  how 
to  be  strong  without  being  aggressive,  how  to  be  free  with- 
out being  arrogant,  how  to  be  rich  without  soul-killing  in- 
dustrialism, and  how  to  be  great  without  being  large. 

But  first  to  set  her  free 

To  shake  off  this  oppressive  weight  of  English  Govern- 
ment under  which  Ireland  was  being  steadily  suffocated  — 
that  was  the  immediate  task.  If  the  world  could  but  realize 
its  loss,  thought  Bernard,  it  would  arise  in  its  wrath  and 
end  the  tyranny.  But  the  world  is  a  collection  of  men  who 
attend  to  their  own  affairs ;  the  men  of  world-vision  are  few, 
and  insufficient  to  leaven  the  mass.  Bernard  could  imagine 
here  and  there  —  in  other  oppressed  countries :  Poland, 
Finland;  in  America;  all  over  Europe  too  —  stray  people 
like  himself,  probably  young  like  himself,  who  sympathized 
with  this  distant  oppressed  island  and  amid  scorn  and  indif- 
ference yearned  for  the  unity  of  mankind.  But  of  what 
avail  were  they?  Ireland  must  work  out  her  salvation  alone 
and  self-reliant.  The  magnitude  of  the  task  both  appalled 
and  braced  him  as  he  contemplated  it. 

"  To  work !  "  he  cried  exultantly,  and  mounting  his  bicycle 
whirled  down  through  the  pine  forest  to  the  city. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   RUSTY   SWORD 


THROUGH  a  powdery  drizzle  that  danced  and  spar- 
kled under  the  street  lamps  hundreds  of  men  moved 
in  one  direction  along  the  main  thoroughfares  of  Dublin. 
Bernard  coming  down  Nassau  Street  plunged  into  the 
stream  at  the  foot  of  Grafton  Street  and  was  carried  along 
in  its  course.  This  human  river  moved  steadily  and  almost 
silently.  Here  and  there  a  laughing  girl  with  a  red-clad 
soldier  or  a  smart  draper's  assistant  moved  in  the  contrary 
direction  like  foam  against  the  current. 

Near  the  Rotunda  the  press  grew  denser,  and  it  took  Ber- 
nard twenty  minutes  to  force  his  way  into  the  great  skating 
rink.  Through  a  door  opposite  to  that  by  which  he  had 
entered  came  a  procession  of  young  men  four  hundred 
strong,  the  students  of  University  College,  among  whom 
Bernard  could  see  McGurk  and  O'Dwyer.  They  were 
followed  almost  immediately  by  another  and  somewhat 
smaller  procession  of  grim  dirty  men  carrying  sticks  and 
hurleys, —  members  of  the  Transport  Workers'  Union  still 
on  strike. 

"  There'll  be  trouble  wid  them  fellas,"  said  an  ancient 
sage  next  to  Bernard. 

The  crowds  still  poured  in.  The  seats  were  rilled,  all 
standing  room  was  occupied,  and  still  multitudes  clamoured 
for  admittance.  The  atmosphere  was  stifling  and  already 
thickening  with  tobacco  fumes.  .  .  .  An  outburst  of  ap- 
plause welcomed  the  appearance  of  a  little  group  of  men 
on  the  platform,  amongst  whom  Bernard  recognized  the 
stalwart  figure  of  Stephen  Ward. 
239 


24o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

When  the  applause  had  somewhat  abated  Eoin  MacNeill 
the  Chairman,  a  bearded  scholarly-looking  Ulsterman, 
stepped  forward  to  speak. 

"  We  are  meeting  in  public,"  he  said,  "  in  order  to  pro- 
ceed at  once  to  the  enrolment  and  organization  of  a  National 
Force  of  Volunteers.  We  invite  all  the  able-bodied  men  of 
Ireland  to  form  themselves  into  a  united  and  disciplined 
body  of  freemen,  prepared  to  secure  and  maintain  the  rights 
and  liberties  common  to  all  the  people  of  Ireland." 

He  went  on  to  point  out  that  the  Irish  Volunteers  would 
be  a  non-partisan,  non-sectarian  movement  whose  sole  object 
was  to  maintain  the  elementary  right  of  freemen  to  bear 
arms  for  the  preservation  of  their  natural  liberty.  Their 
liberties  were  now  menaced  by  the  armed  force  of  a  section 
of  their  countrymen  who  were  openly  backed  by  one  of  the 
great  English  political  parties  and  winked  at  by  the  other, 
and  this  line  of  action  was  calculated  to  diminish  and  mu- 
tilate the  form  of  Self-Government  which  was  ready  to  be 
put  into  force. 

"  If  this  is  so  it  is  plain  to  every  man  that  even  the  modi- 
cum of  civil  rights  left  to  us  by  the  Act  of  Union  is  taken 
from  us,  our  franchise  becomes  a  mockery,  and  we  ourselves 
become  the  most  degraded  nation  in  Europe.  This  insolent 
menace  does  not  satisfy  the  hereditary  enemies  of  our  national 
freedom.  Within  the  past  few  days  a  political  manifesto  has 
been  issued,  signed  most  fittingly  by  a  Castlereagh  and  a 
Beresford,  calling  for  British  Volunteers,  and  for  money  to 
arm  and  equip  them  to  be  sent  into  Ireland  to  triumph  over 
the  Irish  people  and  to  complete  their  disfranchisement  and 
enslavement." 

The  speaker  concluded  by  pointing  out  that  the  proposed 
Volunteer  force  was  to  be  on  a  Territorial  basis,  the  mem- 
bers contributing  to  its  funds  and  electing  their  own  officers. 

A  savage  yell  burst  from  the  Liberty  Hall  men  as  the  next 
speaker,  a  stern,  black-bearded  man,  came  forward.  He 
stood  for  a  few  moments  waiting  for  the  uproar  to  subside 
but  it  only  increased  in  volume.  In  vain  MacNeill  requested 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  241 

a  hearing  for  the  speaker.  He  pointed  out  that  those  who 
had  come  together  that  evening  had  done  so  in  the  cause  of 
their  common  country  and  that  no  sectional  disputes  should 
intrude.  This  was  too  altruistic  a  philosophy  for  the  Trans- 
port Workers,  and  as  soon  as  MacNeill  had  resumed  his 
seat  the  din  broke  out  afresh. 

"  Who's  the  speaker?  "  Bernard  asked  of  his  neighbour. 

"  Larry  Kettle,  one  o'  th'  employers." 

"  Put  out  them  Liberty  Hall  men !  "  yelled  a  voice. 

In  spite  of  the  noise  the  dark  man  read  out  a  long  docu- 
ment from  beginning  to  end  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  All  the 
time  the  Transport  Workers  kept  up  a  deafening  clamour, 
shouting,  boohing,  stamping  their  feet  and  clattering  their 
sticks  on  the  benches,  so  that  not  a  syllable  of  the  manifesto 
could  be  heard. 

"  Well,  to  hell  with  the  Larkinites,"  shouted  a  man  near 
Bernard. 

"  Come  on,  boys,  and  stop  their  row,"  cried  another,  and 
a  little  knot  of  men  began  to  make  its  way  round  the  room 
in  the  direction  of  the  disturbers.  Things  looked  ugly  for 
a  moment,  but  opportunely  the  reading  of  the  manifesto 
came  to  an  end,  and  when  the  next  speaker  arose  the 
clamour  ceased  and  a  collision  was  averted. 

A  succession  of  speakers,  some  constructive  and  passion- 
less, some  fiery  and  oratorical,  addressed  the  meeting,  and 
then  the  chairman  called  for  the  National  Anthem.  A  man 
on  the  platform  rose  immediately  and  a  hush  fell  on  the 
gathering.  The  song  began: 

"  When  boyhood's  fire  was  in  ray  blood, 

I  read  of  ancient  free  men, 
For  Greece  and  Rome  who  bravely  stood 
Three  hundred  men  and  three  men." 

For  the  first  time  the  crudity  of  the  versification  and  the 
banality  of  the  tune  failed  to  jar  on  Bernard.  The  vast  size 
of  the  room,  the  vivid  human  excitement  in  the  air,  the 
emotions  roused  by  ardent  generous  oratory,  the  portentous 


242  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

nature  of  the  moment,  all  combined  to  invest  both  song  and 
singer  with  a  certain  dignity  and  symbolism.  And  as  the 
voice  of  the  singer,  weak  in  the  beginning,  gathered  strength 
and  soared  up  to  the  girdered  roof,  he  felt  a  pricking  of  the 
skin  and  a  thrill  of  the  spine  such  as  only  the  Marseillaise 
had  given  him  before. 

"  And  then  I  dreamed  I  yet  might  see 

Our  fetters  rent  in  twain, 
And  Ireland  long  a  province  be 
A  Nation  once  again." 

A  vision  of  all  who  had  died  for  that  dream  passed  before 
Bernard's  eyes  and  he  knew  he  was  one  in  thought  and  in 
hope  with  the  rebels  of  all  the  ages.  As  the  cadence  surged 
up  to  the  high  note  he  felt  himself  swamped  by  waves  of 
emotion.  A  myriad  projects  formed  themselves  in  his  brain 
and  his  soul  made  vows  of  service. 

There  was  a  pause,  and  the  chorus  came  crashing  from 
five  thousand  throats, 

"  A  Nation  once  again  ! 
A  Nation  once  again !  " 

magnificent,  passionate  reiteration  of  the  love  and  hate,  the 
hope  and  despair,  and  the  vengeful  determination  of  seven 
centuries  of  woe. 

"  And  Ireland  long  a  province  be 
A  Nation  once  again." 

Ere  yet  the  echoes  of  the  chorus  had  died  away  the  singer 
had  started  on  the  second  verse.  Bernard  felt  that  some- 
thing was  wrong.  It  seemed  almost  an  indecent  profanity 
to  call  forth  again  the  emotions  of  a  splendid  moment.  A 
second  verse  was  an  anti-climax.  As  it  sped  on  its  way 
Bernard  became  once  more  critical  of  the  song  (and  in- 
deed its  later  verses  had  better  never  have  been  written). 
Then  the  chorus  came  and  he  gathered  himself  together 
and  joind  his  voice  with  the  others. 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  243 

And  then 

"  No !     No !     No !     He'll  never  sing  a  third  verse." 

But  he  did,  and  a  fourth  as  well,  and  each  verse  was  worse 
than  the  preceding,  and  even  the  stately  reiteration  of  the 
chorus  became  a  tiresome  redundance.  It  came  to  an  end 
at  last  and  the  stewards  bustled  about  distributing  enrolment 
forms. 

As  Bernard  signed  his  the  two  Mallows  came  up  to  him. 

"  Glad  to  see  you're  joining,"  said  Austin.  "  This  is  the 
beginning  of  a  new  era  in  Irish  History.  We're  on  the  eve 
of  great  things." 

There  was  a  feverish  light  in  his  eyes  and  his  voice  trem- 
bled. 

"  So  you're  converted  at  last,"  said  Brian.  "  All  due  to 
me,  you  know."  He  laughed  hoarsely,  and  turning  to  his 
brother  said :  "  You  should  have  seen  him  at  Ashbury.  He 
was  the  rottenest  West  Briton  you  ever  struck." 

"  No  matter,"  said  Austin  sharply.  Then  to  Bernard, 
"  Won't  you  drop  in  and  see  us  some  evening?  " 

Bernard  promised  and  hurried  out  into  the  street.  He 
heard  McGurk's  voice  calling  him  from  somewhere  in  the 
crowd  and  making  his  way  towards  him  with  some  difficulty 
found  him  standing  beside  a  tall,  sandy-haired  man  whose 
face  was  vaguely  familiar  to  Bernard. 

"  Here  you  are,  Lascelles,"  said  McGurk.  "  Let  me  intro- 
duce you.  This  is  Mr.  Hektor  Hannibal  O'Flaherty,  all  the 
way  from  Minnesota." 

"  Perhaps  you  remember  me,"  said  Bernard.  "  We  knew 
each  other  as  kids  in  Stephen's  Green." 

"  Sure  thing.  So  we  did,"  said  O'Flaherty.  "  Put  it 
there,"  and  they  shook  hands  heartily. 

"  Some  crowd,  this,"  remarked  O'Flaherty.  "  Gee,  we'll 
waken  this  one-horse  camp  some  before  we're  through.  Yes, 
sir." 

They  watched  the  dispersing  crowds  for  a  while  and  were 
soon  joined  by  Crowley  and  Moore.  McGurk  introduced 
the  latter  to  O'Flaherty,  who  then  said, 


244  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Say,  boys,  I  move  that  we  all  come  up  to  my  rooms  for 
a  bit.  I'm  living  in  a  sort  of  backwoods  shanty  called  the 
Neptune  Hotel.  Some  hotel,  take  it  from  pop.  But  it'll 
do  to  be  going  on  with." 

"  I  know  a  member  of  the  committee  who's  staying  there," 
said  Bernard,  as  they  turned  northwards. 

"Stephen  Ward?"  inquired  O'Flaherty.  "Yes.  I've 
met  him.  Good  stuff,  he  seems." 

They  overtook  Doran,  the  benevolent  proprietor  of  the 
Neptune,  on  his  way  home. 

"Well,  Doran,"  said  O'Flaherty.     "  Did  you  join  up?" 

"What  else  would  I  be  doing?  But  sure  what  use  am 
I?  Fifty  years  of  age  and  twelve  stone  o'  me,  God  help 
me." 

Arrived  at  the  Neptune  the  whole  crowd  poured  into  the 
coffee-room  and  O'Flaherty  ordered  drinks  all  round.  A 
few  minutes  later  Stephen  entered,  bringing  with  him  Lynch, 
O'Dwyer,  and  Eugene.  After  the  necessary  introductions 
had  been  made  O'Flaherty  called  for  a  toast,  and  Fergus 
Moore,  raising  his  glass,  gravely  proposed, 

"The  Volunteers!  Ireland,  fed  up  with  herself  and  the 
world  in  general,  decides  to  cut  her  throat." 

"  Moore,  you're  an  ass,"  said  Lynch.  "  Here's  a  proper 
toast  for  you."  He  paused  a  moment  and  said:  "To  the 
spontaneous  rising  of  the  Nation  in  arms  in  support  of  Mr. 
Redmond  and  the  Irish  Party.  Here's  to  the  Irish  National 
Volunteers." 

"  Here,  less  o'  that,"  said  McGurk  indignantly.  "  You 
fellows  never  can  think  of  anything  but  your  bloody  old 
party." 

"  Well,  well,"  said  Lynch  agreeably,  "  we'll  leave  the 
party  out.  Here's  to  the  Irish  National  Volunteers." 

"  Cut  out  the  '  National,'  "  said  O'Dwyer.  "  It  stinks 
too  much  of  Westminster,  and  it's  not  the  title  anyhow. 
Here's  to  the  Irish  Volunteers." 

The  toast  was  drunk  with  acclamation. 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  245 

McCall  now  came  in  to  join  the  revellers  and  took  a  seat 
near  to  Bernard. 

"  Great  meeting,  wasn't  it?  "  he  said.  "  The  movement's 
sure  to  "catch  on.  The  country's  about  sick  of  the  Party's 
weakness." 

"  Let's  have  a  song,  boys,"  said  McGurk,  sitting  down  to 
the  battered  piano  in  a  corner  of  the  room  and  jangling  the 
keys. 

Thereat  every  one  who  was  not  already  seated  seized  a 
convenient  chair  and  made  himself  comfortable.  Bernard 
let  his  eye  wander  round  the  assembly,  studying  each  face 
and  attitude  in  turn.  There  was  Eugene,  shy  and  uncom- 
fortable, in  the  corner  near  the  door,  and  beside  him  the 
expansive  figure  of  Lynch,  quietly  enjoying  a  small  cheroot. 
Then  came  the  landlord,  fat,  vulgar  and  genial,  smoking 
cut  plug  in  a  blackened  clay  pipe;  then  Moore,  handsome 
and  reckless,  chewing  a  cigar ;  and  Crowley  with  his  chair 
tilted  back  against  the  wall  blowing  smoke  rings  up  to  the 
ceiling;  and  McCall  meditatively  puffing  at  a  huge  calabash 
pipe.  On  Bernard's  left  was  O'Flaherty,  square-jawed  and 
masterful,  and  beyond  him  could  be  seen  the  flushed  and 
excited  face  of  O'Dwyer,  whose  teeth  were  clenched  on  an 
empty  briar  pipe.  At  the  end  of  the  line  sat  Stephen  Ward 
with  a  smile  of  faint  amusement  on  his  features. 

At  McGurk's  call  Lynch  rose  and  sang  T.  D.  Sullivan's 
famous  song,  beginning:  — 

"  Deep  in  Canadian  Woods  we've  met 

From  one  bright  island  flown. 
Great  is  the  land  we  tread,  but  yet 

Our  hearts  are  with  our  own. 
And  ere  we  leave  this  shanty  small, 

Ere  fades  the  autumn  day, 
We'll   toast  old   Ireland,   dear   old   Ireland, 

Ireland,  boys,  hurray !  " 

The  chorus  rang  out  lustily,  and  Bernard  thought  of  the 
story  he  had  heard  lately  of  how  an  Irish  regiment  in  the 


246  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Federal  Army  on  the  night  before  the  battle  of  Chancellors- 
ville  had  struck  up  that  song  round  their  bivouac  fires,  and 
when  they  had  finished  heard  it  come  back  like  an  echo  across 
the  Rapidan  from  the  lips  of  another  Irish  regiment  in  the 
opposing  camp. 

"  Come  on,  O'Dwyer,"  said  McGurk,  when  the  song  was 
finished,  "  give  us  your  parody  of  that." 

O'Dwyer  got  up  and  sang  to  the  same  air: 

"  See  bold  Britannia  greater  grow 

On  her  high  imperial  throne, 
Small  are  the  lands  she  loves,  and  so 

She's  added  them  to  her  own. 
Then  subjects  all,  both  great  and  small, 

Fill  up  your  glass  today 
And  toast  old  England,  noble  England, 

England,  boys,  hurray!" 

The  company  joined  in  the  ironical  chorus  with  a  will, 
and  verse  after  verse  full  of  sarcasm  and  invective  followed. 

"  Damn  good !  "  cried  McGurk  enthusiastically  at  the  fin- 
ish, and  then  some  one  called  to  McGurk  to  sing  the  Stutter- 
ing Lovers.  The  next  hour  passed  merrily  with  song  and 
story,  and  then  as  people  made  preparations  to  depart,  Crow- 
ley  sprang  up  and  said : 

"  Another  toast,  boys !     Here's  Sever  the  Ligature." 

Those  who  had  any  dregs  left  in  their  glasses  drank  the 
toast  and  the  remainder  cheered. 

"  I  suppose  you  signed  on?  "  said  Bernard  to  Eugene  on 
the  way  home. 

"  Indeed  I  didn't,"  said  Eugene.  "  I  don't  believe  in  vio- 
lent methods.  We  have  the  law  on  our  side  and  we  ought 
to  keep  it  that  way." 

"  Good  lord !  "  said  Bernard.  "  You're  not  a  Nationalist 
at  all.  You're  only  a  Whig." 

"  I  was  a  Nationalist  before  you  were,"  retorted  Eugene. 

"Hmph!"  muttered  Bernard.  "Logic  was  never  your 
strong  point." 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  247 

2 

Merrion  Square  and  its  environs  was  hostile  to  the  new 
movement.  The  Tories  of  course  were  furious,  denounced 
the  Volunteers  as  blackguards  and  rebels,  and  plainly  re- 
garded the  thing  as  an  infringement  of  Ulster's  copyright. 
The  Whigs,  while  feeling  as  strongly  about  it,  did  not  ven- 
ture on  such  unqualified  vilification.  "  Unfortunate,"  "  ill- 
considered,"  "  inopportune,"  were  the  epithets  they  applied  to 
it.  They  were  in  fact  both  annoyed  and  frightened  by  this 
rattling  of  the  sword  of  Ireland.  It  was  but  a  few  years 
since  Nationalism  had  begun  to  live  down  its  association  with 
murder,  dynamite,  agrarian  outrage,  and  pro-Boer-ism,  and 
to  become  a  respectable  creed  for  a  gentleman ;  and  here  was 
a  definite  lapse  back  to  those  bad  old  days  of  violence  and  de- 
fiance. So  for  a  time  the  Whigs  began  to  write  letters  to 
the  papers  sincerely  deprecating  this  attempt  to  force  the 
hand  of  the  Government  and  substitute  the  out-of-date  meth- 
ods of  violence  for  those  of  peaceful  persuasion,  or  gravely 
announcing  that  their  Home  Rule  Faith  was  seriously  shaken. 

And  then  the  Irish  Times  came  out  with  a  leading  article 
in  praise  of  the  vigorous  and  generous  spirit  of  the  young 
generation  of  Nationalists.  True,  the  Irish  Times  had  an 
ax  to  grind.  It  hoped  that  the  Volunteers  would  overthrow 
Mr.  Redmond  arid  his  party  and  wished  to  patronize  and 
flatter  them  into  that  course.  But  the  net  result  was  to 
stabilize  the  wavering  Whigs. 

Then  there  were  the  neutrals,  the  people  who  claimed  to 
have  no  politics.  Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington,  for  instance, 
thought  it  rather  absurd  to  arm  and  drill  for  the  trifling  and 
unimportant  cause  of  Ireland,  and  Sir  Perry  Tifflytis  ex- 
pressed a  hope  that  the  Government  would  be  firm  and  sup- 
press both  forces  of  Volunteers,  Ulster  and  Irish  alike. 
George,  the  only  and  darling  son  of  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke, 
was  another  neutral. 

"  I've  no  politics,"  he  said.  "  But  this  armed  bullying 
of  parliament  by  both  sides  is  a  menace  to  order  and  govern- 
ment." 


24&  -THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  I  thought  you  said  you'd  no  politics,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Neither  have  I.  I  consider  both  sides  equally  in  the 
wrong." 

"  But  if  you  deny  the  right  of  ourselves  or  the  Ulstermen 
to  resist  the  Government  you  uphold  the  right  of  the  Gov- 
ernment to  coerce  us.  Isn't  that  politics  ?  My  dear  chap,  it 
won't  wash.  You  can't  help  being  a  politician  if  you  live 
in  a  conquered  country." 

It  was  at  one  of  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke's  Tango  Teas  that 
this  conversation  took  place.  Bernard  was  there  as  an  escort 
to  Alice  who  was  an  enthusiast  of  the  new  craze.  They 
sat  at  tea  in  the  front  drawing-room  watching  through  the 
folding  doors  the  evolutions  of  the  professional  exponents  of 
the  dance.  When  these  had  finished  Alice  and  George  and 
another  couple  took  the  floor.  Bernard  watched  his  sister, 
looking,  he  thought,  rather  absurd  in  her  outre  frock,  per- 
form the  movements  of  voluptuous  symbolism  with  the  non- 
chalance of  perfect  innocence. 

"  Isn't  it  lovely?  Your  sister  dances  beautifully,  Mr. 
Lascelles." 

It  was  Madge  Conroy,  Eugene's  divinity,  who  spoke. 
Turning  to  her  brother,  she  continued: 

"  You'll  have  to  learn  it,  Teddy,  and  dance  it  with  me." 

"  Too  much  brain  work  about  it  for  my  taste,"  said 
Teddy.  "  The  jolly  old  One-Step's  good  enough  for  me." 

"  I  say,  you  know,"  said  Molloy,  coming  over,  "  this  is 
a  backward  town.  The  Tango's  been  the  rage  for  ages  in 
London.  Just  about  getting  stale  as  a  matter  of  fact, —  and 
it's  only  beginning  here.  May  I  have  the  pleasure,  Miss 
Conroy?" 

He  took  her  away  to  the  dancing-room,  and  Teddy  began 
to  discuss  critically  with  Bernard  the  musical  comedy,  a 
"  London  success  "  of  the  year  before  last,  then  being  per- 
formed by  a  fifth  rate  company  at  the  Gaiety.  This  interest- 
ing topic  exhausted,  he  searched  about  in  his  mind  for  more 
to  say. 

"  Awful  rot  this  Nationalist  Volunteer  business,"  he  said 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  249 

at  last.  "  But  this  Arms  Proclamation  ought  to  put  the  lid 
on  them,  what!  And  the  good  old  Ulstermen  are  armed 
already." 

"  The  Arms  Proclamation  doesn't  matter  a  damn,"  said 
Bernard.  "  We  can  get  arms  in  spite  of  it." 

"We?  "queried' Teddy. 

"  Yes.  I  happen  to  be  a  member  of  the  Irish  Volun- 
teers." 

"  Rot,"  said  Teddy. 

Bernard  showed  him  his  membership  card.  Teddy  was 
stupefied  and  stammered  incoherently. 

"  Thinking  of  joining?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"Me!" 

"  Why  not?  Tell  me,  do  you  think  it  right  for  French- 
men to  arm  themselves  in  defence  of  France?  " 

"  I  suppose  so." 

"  And  for  Italians  to  arm  themselves  in  defence  of  Italy?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  And  for  Englishmen  to  arm  themselves  in  defence  of 
England?  " 

"  Of  course." 

"  And  for  Irishmen  to  arm  themselves  in  defence  of  Ire- 
land?" 

"  Ah,  that's  different." 

"Why?" 

"  I  don't  take  any  interest  in  politics,  but  I  object  to  dis- 
loyalty." 

"  Disloyalty  to  whom?  " 

"  To  the  King,  of  course." 

"  Then  you  disapprove  of  the  Ulster  Volunteers?  " 

"  Oh,  no.     They're  loyal." 

"  They're  resisting  an  Act  of  Parliament." 

"  An  Act  that  puts  them  under  a  rule  they  hate." 

"  Then  is  it  always  right  to  resist  being  put  under  a  rule 
you  hate  ?  " 

"  Well  —  I  suppose  so." 

"Then  wasn't  Robert  Emmet  right?" 


250  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Oh,  no.     He  was  a  rebel." 

Bernard  felt  like  taking  Teddy  by  the  feet  and  battering 
his  head  to  pulp  against  the  wall.  But  all  he  said  was : 

"  Look  here,  Conroy,  you're  a  fool.  You'd  better  start 
exercising  your  brain  by  learning  the  Tango." 

He  got  up  quickly  and  took  his  cup  over  to  Mrs.  Gunby 
Rourke  for  more  tea. 

3 

"And  how  are  things  shaping  in  your  Company?  "  asked 
O'Flaherty.  He  and  Bernard  were  taking  tea  in  the  same 
restaurant  that  had  been  the  scene  of  so  many  conversa- 
tions. 

"  We're  pulling  ourselves  together  gradually,"  said  Ber- 
nard. "  After  a  couple  of  drills  we  had  an  election  of  tem- 
porary officers.  I'm  first  Lieutenant.  Our  captain's  a  pre- 
posterous little  fellow  called  Brohoon  whose  principal  claim 
to  notoriety  seems  to  be  the  letters  he  writes  to  the  news- 
papers. He's  an  ass  of  the  first  water." 

"  This  system  of  electing  officers  is  absurd,"  said  O'Flah- 
erty. 

"  It's  the  only  system  we  can  manage  at  present.  And  I 
like  the  democratic  idea  of  it." 

"  Sir,  you  take  it  from  me,  democracy's  a  cod.  It's  ridicu- 
lous enough  in  civil  affairs,  but  in  military  matters  it's  a 
wash  out,  and  I  tell  you,  if  we're  to  make  this  movement  of 
ours  a  success  it's  got  to  be  cut  right  out  of  it.  That's  all 
there's  to  it." 

"  You  may  be  right  as  far  as  the  military  side  is  con- 
cerned," replied  Bernard,  "  but  I'm  a  democrat  heart  and 
soul  in  everything  else." 

"  Well,  I'm  not,"  said  O'Flaherty.  "  Democracy  means 
the  rule  of  cods,  because  it  puts  the  government  of  a  country 
into  the  hands  of  the  men  who  can  cod  the  people  most. 
If  you  want  efficient  government  you  must  have  the  efficient 
people  on  top,  and  they'll  never  be  put  there  by  the  votes 
of  a  democracy.  No,  sir.  Monarchy  for  me.  If  you've 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  251 

a  fixed  and  stable  head  to  the  state  he  can  nominate  the  right 
people  to  the  right  place.  .  .  .  Look  at  Germany." 

"  I  prefer  freedom  to  efficiency,"  said  Bernard. 

"  What  do  you  know  about  it?  I've  tried  both.  You've 
had  neither.  .  .  .  Hello!  There  are  Ward  and  Crowley 
coming  in." 

He  called  them  over  and  made  room  for  them. 

"  Lascelles  has  been  telling  me  he  prefers  freedom  to  effi- 
ciency," he  said  when  they  were  seated. 

"  Freedom  for  me,"  said  Crowley. 

"  The  two  aren't  necessarily  contradictory,"  said  Stephen. 

"  I  know,"  said  O'Flaherty.  "  What  I  was  going  to  tell 
him  when  you  came  in  was  that  you  can't  be  sure  of  keeping 
your  freedom  unless  you're  efficient,  and  you  can't  be  efficient 
without  giving  up  some  of  your  freedom.  I  maintain  that 
the  German  system  is  better  than  the  English.  They've 
good  and  efficient  laws  there  that  you're  properly  punished 
for  breaking.  In  England  you  can  do  practically  anything 
you  like,  especially  if  you're  rich.  So  Germany's  a  safer 
country  for  poor  men  like  you  and  me.  We  couldn't  be  run 
over  there  by  rich  men's  motor  cars  with  impunity.  We 
couldn't  have  our  public  beauty  spots  destroyed  by  the  selfish- 
ness of  individuals.  In  Germany  every  one  gives  up  some  of 
his  personal  liberty  for  the  benefit  of  others.  In  England 
every  one  does  what  he  likes  no  matter  how  he  inconven- 
iences others.  That's  the  distinction  between  freedom  and 
efficiency.  .  .  .  Well,  as  I  was  saying,  give  me  a  Monarchy, 
where  the  King  is  a  fixed  institution  that  can  pick  and 
choose  among  the  people  for  the  men  best  fitted  to  govern." 

"  Well,"  said  Bernard,  "  just  look  at  the  Kings  of  modern 
Europe.  They're  a  nice  lot.  The  only  one  worth  his  salt 
is  the  Kaiser." 

"  The  result  of  in-breeding,"  said  Crowley. 

"  Well,  one  remedy  for  that,"  said  O'Flaherty,  "  would 
be,  when  a  kingly  line  seems  to  be  degenerating,  pension 
them  off  or  put  them  in  a  lethal  chamber,  and  choose  a  strong 
healthy  child  of  good,  sound  bourgeois  parentage  to  educate 


252  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

for  kingship  and  so  start  a  new  line.  A  king,  you  know, 
doesn't  need  more  than  average  mental  qualities.  His  busi- 
ness is  to  pick  out  the  good  stuff  in  other  people." 

"  It's  an  interesting  proposition,"  said  Stephen,  "  but  it 
has  obvious  disadvantages." 

"  I  daresay.  But  it  saves  us  from  the  rule  of  cods  any- 
how. And  that's  what  an  Irish  democracy  would  mean." 

"  The  Irish  people,"  said  Crowley,  "  may  be  divided  into 
four  parts:  cods,  bags's,  lunatics  and  elite.  Cods  are  people 
who  blither  a  great  deal,  mean  nothing,  are  entrusted  with 
the  doing  of  everything,  and  with  the  maximum  of  fuss  get 
through  the  minimum  of  work.  Our  friends  Lynch  and 
Mullery  are  cods,  so  are  about  a  quarter  of  the  Irish  people, 
and  about  three  quarters  of  the  Irish  Party.  Bags's,  on  the 
other  hand,  while  they  blither  as  much  as  cods,  mean  a  great 
deal  and  are  very  earnest  and  serious,  but  they  never  do  any- 
thing at  all,  and  don't  want  to.  The  balance  of  the  Irish 
Party,  mostly  Sinn  Feiners,  all  middle  class  Home  Rulers, 
and  nine-tenths  of  the  students  of  University  College  are 
bags's.  Geoffrey  Manders  is  a  typical  bags.  There's  one 
really  perfect  bags  I  know,  a  man  called  by  the  melodious 
name  of  Cornelius  Featherstonehaugh.  He's  a  fat,  prosper- 
ous man  who  goes  to  every  Nationalist  meeting  or  celebration 
—  he  was  at  the  Rotunda  meeting  —  and  never  does  any- 
thing. He's  a  jolly  decent  fellow,  but  he'll  never  grow  thin 
on  his  hard  work  for  Ireland.  .  .  .  Where  are  we  now? 
Oh,  yes.  The  next  division  are  the  lunatics.  Most  of  them 
are  fervent  physical  force  men.  Physical  force  is  their  rem- 
edy for  everything.  If  they  don't  like  a  play  they  smash  up 
the  theatre;  if  their  dirty  little  minds  consider  a  picture  in- 
decent they  break  up  the  shop  it's  on  sale  in.  And  as  for 
their  politics!  Some  of  them,  like  Brian  Mallow,  really  be- 
lieve they  can  free  Ireland  with  pikes  and  green  flags. 
Others,  like  his  brother  Austin,  think  that  if  they  get  us 
thrashed  often  enough  we  can  win  in  the  end." 

"And  the  elite?"  questioned  Stephen. 

"  There  are  two  divisions  of  the  elite,"  said  Crowley. 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  253 

"  First  the  fine,  quiet,  sturdy  rank  and  file  that  fought  in 
Ninety-Eight  and  Sixty-Seven,  and  is  pouring  into  the  Volun- 
teers at  present,  without  waiting,  like  the  cods  and  bags's, 
for  the  Party  leaders  to  give  the  word." 

"  And  then  ?  "  said  Bernard. 

"  Then  the  intelligent  politicians  like  MacNeill  and  our 
humble  selves.  .  .  .  There's  my  complete  analysis  of  the 
Irish  people." 

"  Some  people!  "  said  O'Flaherty. 

"  It  looks  as  if  we  shall  have  to  do  without  the  cods  and 
bags's  for  the  present,"  said  Stephen.  "  The  Party  hasn't 
given  us  the  seal  of  its  approval  yet.  Quite  the  contrary  in 
fact." 

"  The  longer  they  stay  out  the  better,"  said  O'Flaherty. 
"  But  even  the  cods  and  bags's  will  begin  to  get  fed  up  if 
the  Party  goes  on  hauling  down  the  flag  long  enough." 

An  attendant  brought  tea  and  cake  for  Stephen  and 
Crowley,  and  for  a  time  the  talk  was  on  trivial  subjects. 
Presently  Bernard  said  to  O'Flaherty: 

"  You've  knocked  round  the  world  a  bit  since  I  last  saw 
you.  Tell  us  some  of  your  adventures." 

"  I've  had  a  few,"  O'Flaherty  admitted. 

"  Well,  spit  'em  out,  old  chap,"  said  Crowley. 

"  Where  shall  I  begin,"  said  O'Flaherty. 

"  At  the  beginning,"  said  Stephen. 

4 

"  Well,"  said  O'Flaherty,  "  any  one  who  took  the  trouble 
to  study  my  habits  and  inclinations  from  the  time  I  was  a 
kid  till  I  was  seventeen,  could  tell  I  was  cut  out  to  be  a  sol- 
dier or  a  diplomat, —  or  both.  Lascelles,  here,  remembers  the 
games  we  had  in  Stephen's  Green  when  we  were  youngsters; 
and  when  I  was  fifteen  or  so,  when  I  wasn't  reading  military 
books  I  was  studying  the  diplomatic  news  in  the  papers  and 
trying  to  catch  their  drift, —  as  far  as  a  man  could  for  the 
flap-doodle  and  eyewash  of  the  language  it's  written  in. 
Well,  sir,  fathers  as  a  general  rule  have  about  as  much  no- 


254  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

tion  of  considering  their  sons'  inclinations  as  a  butcher  has 
for  a  sheep,  and  mine  was  no  sort  of  exception.  He  was 
bound  I'd  be  a  respectable  sort  of  professional  guy,  but  I 
wasn't  having  any.  But  this  unfortunate  island  hasn't  more 
opening  for  soldiers  or  diplomats  than  Maine  has  for  saloon- 
keepers, and  I'd  no  intention  of  dirtying  my  soul  or  my  skin 
by  putting  on  England's  uniform.  In  fact,  way  down  in 
my  heart  I'd  always  had  a  kind  of  hankering  to  be  up  against 
that  same  uniform.  Well,  one  day  just  after  I'd  left  school 
and  was  preparing  for  matric,  I  got  about  fed  up  and  de- 
cided to  skip  off  and  join  the  French  Foreign  Legion.  I 
waited  about  a  bit  and  saved  up  some  money,  and  the  day 
I  heard  the  examiners  had  stuck  me  I  made  a  bolt  for  Lon- 
don, and  a  week  later  I  shipped  as  a  stowaway  for  Algiers. 
...  A  stowaway's  life  isn't  all  romance  and  adventure,  by 
the  way.  It's  mostly  boredom  and  seasickness,  but  we  won't 
go  into  that.  .  .  .  We  reached  Algiers  at  last,  and  as  soon 
as  I  could  escape  from  the  ship,  I  struck  out  for  the  nearest 
depot  of  the  Foreign  Legion  and  enlisted. 

"  Well,  boys,  I  daresay  you've  a  lot  of  romantic  notions 
about  that  Legion.  I  know  7  had.  But  they  came  out 
pretty  quick  in  the  wash  I  can  tell  you.  You  take  it  from 
me,  boys,  life  in  the  Foreign  Legion  is  no  joke.  It's  a 
dog's  life  and  about  as  profitable  as  selling  bootlaces  on 
O'Connell  Bridge  in  wet  weather.  However,  I'd  joined  up 
at  a  pretty  exciting  time.  Some  months  before  a  French 
company  had  begun  to  build  a  railway  from  Casablanca  in 
Morocco,  and  right  in  their  track  was  a  very  ancient  Moorish 
cemetery.  With  the  characteristic  tact  of  Christians  in  deal- 
ing with  people  of  another  religion,  and  with  the  human- 
ity and  politeness  which  so  distinguishes  Europeans  in  deal- 
ing with  less  civilized  peoples,  they  decided  to  cut  right 
through  this  cemetery  in  spite  of  the  objections  of  the  na- 
tives. Well,  naturally  there  were  ructions  and  some  sacred 
European  lives  were  lost.  In  next  to  no  time  we  had  in- 
vaded Morocco  and  marched  on  Casablanca.  After  some 
stiff  fighting  in  the  neighbourhood  we  bombarded  the  city, 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  255 

wrecked  most  of  it,  and  killed  several  thousands  of  the  in- 
habitants. Gee,  it  was  dirty  work,  and  when  it  was  over 
we  occupied  the  whole  Shawiya  district  around  it,  not  with- 
out some  stiff  fighting,  for  the  Moors  are  tough  stuff. 

"  Now  I  hadn't  read  the  diplomatic  news  of  the  last  three 
years  for  nothing,  and  I  knew  that  this  invasion  of  Morocco 
was  a  flat  violation  of  the  Act  of  Algeciras,  the  treaty  signed 
by  the  Great  Powers  in  1906  guaranteeing  the  independence 
and  sovereignty  of  Morocco.  France  had  already  infringed 
it  in  a  minor  way  by  occupying  Udja  in  retaliation  for  the 
murder  of  some  damned  idiot  of  a  Frenchman  who  probably 
deserved  all  he  got.  Of  course  she  made  the  usual  promises 
of  immediate  withdrawal,  but  devil  a  one  she  kept,  and  as 
every  one  knows  she's  in  Udja  and  Shawiya  to  this  day. 
...  I  can  tell  you  I  was  pretty  fed  up.  I  hadn't  joined 
the  Legion  to  help  France  with  England's  connivance  to 
put  her  yoke  on  a  lot  of  unfortunate  Moors :  —  damn  good 
stuff  those  Moors,  take  it  from  Pop.  I  got  this  scar  over  my 
eye  taking  a  village  in  Shawiya :  —  anyway,  I  was  fed  up 
and  took  my  first  chance  to  desert.  Getting  away  wasn't 
so  very  hard,  though  I  had  to  tap  a  sentry  who  got  officious 
on  the  head.  Then  I  made  my  way  southwards  towards  the 
desert.  I  had  a  bundle  of  native  clothes  with  me  that  I 
stripped  off  a  corpse  (there  were  lots  of  corpses  in  Shawiya 
in  those  days)  and  as  soon  as  I  could  I  chucked  off  my  uni- 
form and  put  them  on.  All  through  the  day  I  lay  in  hid- 
ing, thinking  out  a  line  of  action.  My  only  landmark  was 
a  great  range  of  mountains  a  hundred  miles  away  in  the 
east.  I  knew  Fez  was  behind  them,  and  I  decided  to  make 
that  way,  travelling  by  night  and  hiding  by  day,  and  then 
to  pass  myself  off  as  a  German  and  beat  up  the  German 
consulate.  (You  see  the  Germans  are  pretty  popular  in 
Morocco  because  they're  the  only  European  nation  that  treats 
the  Moors  any  way  decently.)  .  .  .  Well,  I  struck  out  fur- 
ther south  the  next  night  so  as  to  get  clear  of  the  French 
lines  of  communication,  and  hid  again  all  through  the  next 
day. 


256  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Things  had  gone  gaily  up  to  this,  but  now  I  hit  a  bad 
streak  of  luck.  Lying  in  the  sun  all  day  must  have  been 
bad  for  my  head,  for  I  don't  know  what  I  did  or  where  I 
went  that  night.  I  must  have  wandered  miles  off  the  track 
and  then  dropped  in  a  faint,  for  when  I  came  to  it  was  day- 
light and  a  Moorish  girl  was  looking  down  on  me  and  my 
head  was  in  her  lap.  You  won't  guess  what  had  happened 
to  me.  I'd  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  band  of  marauding 
Nomads  and  she  was  the  chieftain's  daughter.  I  started  bab- 
bling out  at  once  that  I  wasn't  French  but  German  —  in 
English  too,  like  the  sunstruck  ass  that  I  was.  But  it  made 
precious  little  difference  to  the  damsel,  for  she  didn't  under- 
stand a  word.  When  my  head  got  clearer  I  looked  around 
and  saw  the  band,  half  a  dozen  of  the  dirtiest-looking  black- 
guards you  ever  struck,  and  a  grey-bearded  old  patriarch, 
their  chief.  Their  horses  were  tethered  near  at  hand. 
(Arab  steeds!  Not  on  your  life.  A  collection  of  the  man- 
giest cab  horses  you  could  pick  up.)  Well  the  gang  seemed 
to  be  holding  a  sort  of  consultation  as  to  the  best  way  of  dis- 
posing of  me.  One  ruffian  quite  obviously  wanted  to  prac- 
tise his'  markmanship  on  me,  but  he  was  outvoted.  The 
chief's  daughter  pleaded  for  me,  and  I  was  taken  on  as  a 
sort  of  man-of-all-work  to  the  gang.  It  wasn't  a  very  digni- 
fied position  for  a  white  man,  but  it  was  that  or  starvation, 
which  was  rather  a  poor  choice.  I  was  given  the  spare 
horse. —  Some  horse!  I  bet  I'd  seen  him  on  a  cabstand  in 
Dublin  a  few  years  before.  Well,  on  that  horse's  back  I 
assisted  in  their  marauding  till  we'd  made  the  district  too 
hot  to  hold  us,  when  we  bolted  for  a  season  to  the  Sahara 
and  lay  low. 

"  I  stuck  that  life  for  nine  solid  months.  I've  practised 
many  professions  in  my  time,  but  I  think  marauding  is  the 
last  one  I'd  go  back  to.  It's  a  bit  monotonous,  you  know, 
with  its  perpetual  alternations  of  riding,  raiding  and  hiding. 
And  I  did  get  sick  of  that  desert,  all  sand  and  sunshine. 
Don't  you  get  taken  in,  boys,  by  any  punk  dope  you  may  read 
about  the  free,  joyous  life  of  the  nomads.  Not  that  I  was 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  257 

badly  treated.  The  chief  was  a  decent  old  skin  with  an  out- 
landish name  I  never  quite  got  the  hang  of.  I  used  to  call 
him  Methuselah.  He  kind  of  took  to  me  because  I  reminded 
him  of  his  son  who  had  been  captured  way  back  in  a  raid  on 
Tamagrut  and  tortured  to  death  for  the  amusement  of  the 
Sultan.  I  got  on  all  right  with  the  gang  too,  all  except  the 
man  who  wranted  to  shoot  me  at  the  start.  I  never  quite 
got  his  name  either,  so  I  called  him  Cain.  It  was  he  who 
rode  after  me  and  captured  me  the  night  I  tried  to  escape, 
and  stood  by  fingering  his  trigger  in  the  hope  that  the  old 
man  would  condemn  me  to  death.  Gee,  you  should  have 
seen  his  face  when  Methuselah  gave  me  a  free  pardon.  The 
Sahara  climate  took  a  full  week  to  warm  my  blood  after- 
wards. 

"  But  the  chief's  daughter  —  gee,  she  was  a  peach.  Hair 
black  as  night,  and  the  blush  of  the  rose  under  her  tawny 
skin.  Eyes  like  two  sloes  with  a  flame  in  the  depths  of  them 
like  you  get  in  an  opal.  Teeth  as  white  as  Pentelic  marble, 
and  a  figure  like  the  Winged  Victory  of  Samothrace.  She 
sure  was  some  girl,  and  though  you  mayn't  believe  it,  she  got 
quite  a  mash  on  your  humble  servant.  She'd  a  heathenish 
name  that  I  couldn't  pronounce  but  I  used  to  sail  her  Jenny, 
which  pleased  her  just  as  well  and  suited  her  a  lot  better. 
.  .  .  You  boys  won't  like  what  I  did  next,  but  I  believe  in 
taking  what  comes  to  you,  and  I  was  fair  sick  of  the  gang 
and  ready  to  do  anything  to  get  away. 

"  Yes.  She  tipped  me  the  glad  eye,  and  I  responded  so 
as  to  get  an  ally.  I  hadn't  learnt  much  of  her  language 
but  we  fixed  up  a  means  of  communication  somehow.  These 
things  come  easy  if  you  know  how.  I  won't  give  you  the 
details,  but  the  gist  of  the  matter  was  that  she  arranged  to 
help  me  to  escape  if  I'd  promise  to  come  back  some  day  and 
fetch  her  away  with  me.  It  wasn't  a  fair  promise  to  make, 
but  necessity  knows  no  decency,  and  I  meant  to  keep  the 
promise  at  the  time,  and  maybe  I'll  keep  it  yet.  Anyhow, 
she  put  some  drug  or  other  in  their  supper  one  night,  and  I 
took  the  best  of  the  horses  and  my  leave.  She  came  a  bit  of 


258  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

the  way  to  see  me  off,  and  there  in  the  heart  of  the  desert 
by  the  sandy  bank  of  the  Wady  Saoora  we  took  a  tender 
farewell.  The  moon  was  up  and  the  weird  silence  of  the 
desert  was  all  around  us,  and  she  clung  to  me  and  we  kissed 
each  other  and  she  made  me  repeat  my  promise.  Gee,  it 
was  just  like  a  romance  by  Robert  Hichens.  It  only  needed 
a  few  bulbuls  to  complete  the  picture,  but  I  guess  there 
weren't  any  in  that  locality. 

"  She  went  back  to  the  camp  and  I  crossed  the  Saoora 
and  followed  the  course  of  the  Wady  Susfana  for  several 
days.  Then  about  twenty  miles  south  of  Figuig  I  struck  off 
to  the  east  into  Algeria.  This  was  the  most  dangerous  part 
of  nay  travels  because  I  was  on  French  Territory  now  and 
liable  to  be  shot  as  a  deserter,  if  caught.  However,  I  came 
through  all  right.  After  four  months  of  travelling  by  night 
and  hiding  by  day,  and  starving  most  of  the  time  (not  to 
mention  such  details  as  sicknesses  and  fevers)  I  crossed  the 
frontier  into  Tripoli  and  joined  on  to  a  caravan  making  for 
Egypt-  •  •  •  Boys,  I  never  thought  I'd  live  to  be  glad  to 
see  the  Union  Jack,  but  you'd  be  glad  to  see  the  devil  him- 
self if  he  marked  the  end  of  a  journey  you  were  sick  of. 
At  length  I  landed  in  Cairo,  dead  beat  and  without  a  red 
cent  in  my  pocket. 

"  Well,  I  kept  myself  for  a  year  in  Cairo  on  all  sorts  of  odd 
jobs,  and  at  the  same  time  I  looked  up  the  back  numbers, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  Moroccan  situation.  During  the  time 
I'd  spent  in  the  desert  things  had  been  going  from  bad  to 
worse  there.  The  French,  you  may  remember,  sent  in  an 
indemnity  bill  to  the  Sultan  for  a  couple  of  millions.  Some- 
thing like  England  charging  the  Union  bribery  on  Ireland, 
eh?  By  this  time  poor  old  Morocco  was  tied  hand  and  foot 
by  European  finance,  and  the  Sultan  was  forced  to  torture 
his  people  to  raise  enough  money  to  make  ends  meet.  Re- 
sult, fresh  chaos  in  Morocco  and  a  demand  for  renewed 
French  intervention.  .  .  .  Useful  sort  of  vicious  circle,  don't 
you  think?  .  .  .  Then  Spain  thought  she  ought  to  have  a 
finger  in  the  pie,  and  answered  France's  occupation  of  Fez 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  259 

by  pouring  troops  into  the  Riff.  When  I  left  Cairo  there 
were  a  hundred  thousand  foreign  troops  in  Morocco  and  the 
Act  of  Algeciras  had  been  virtually  torn  up.  Fine  object 
lesson  in  Christianity  and  civilization  for  the  Moors,  what? 
Well 

"  I  shipped  from  Cairo  as  a  greaser  on  a  steamship  for 
Boston.  A  hundred  miles  south-west  of  Cape  St.  Vincent 
we  sighted  a  little  German  gunboat  making  south.  It  turned 
out  afterwards  to  be  the  Panther  bound  for  Agadir.  You 
may  remember  the  fuss  kicked  up  in  the  English  papers  at 
the  time  about  what  they  called  this  '  display  of  German 
brutality.'  Well,  the  Germans  hadn't  more  or  less  right  in 
Morocco  than  the  rest  of  the  powers,  but  they  didn't  shell 
any  city  or  occupy  any  territory  anyhow.  They  didn't  as 
much  as  fire  a  gun  or  land  a  marine,  and  if  they  were  out  for 
aggression  don't  you  think  they'd  have  sent  more  than  a  little 
tin  gunboat?  The  Germans  don't  do  things  by  halves. 

"  But  I'm  wandering  from  my  story.  When  I  reached 
Boston  I  got  the  nastiest  shock  of  my  life.  I  found  I  couldn't 
join  the  American  Army  until  I  was  a  properly  squared  up 
citizen.  It  was  some  jar,  but  I  quickly  decided  I'd  stay  and 
serve  out  my  seven  years  for  Rachel,  so  to  speak.  For  six 
months  I  loaded  cargoes  on  the  quays  of  Boston  and  was  a 
good  deal  more  than  sick  of  it  when  I  knocked  up  against 
Augustus  X.  Skinner.  He  was  standing  on  the  quay  one 
day  and  seemed  to  be  interesting  himself  in  the  way  I 
manoeuvred  the  landing  of  a  cargo  of  lions  and  camels.  (I 
didn't  tell  you  I  was  foreman  by  this  time.) 

"  '  Like  a  new  job  at  four  times  what  you're  getting  now?  ' 
says  he. 

' '  Sure  thing,'  says  I. 

"  '  Mind  breaking  the  law?  '  says  he. 

"  '  Try  me,'  says  I. 

"  And  that  settled  it.  He  was  organizing  a  gun-running 
stunt  on  the  Mexican  frontier,  and  he'd  spotted  me  as  a 
likely  second-in-command.  Well,  I  stayed  in  that  line  of 
business  for  a  good  while,  and  when  I'd  put  by  a  bit  of  cash 


260  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

I  decided  to  increase  it  by  blossoming  out  as  a  financier. 
I  went  to  New  York,  studied  the  markets  for  a  bit,  specu- 
lated, and  in  a  couple  of  days  lost  half  the  money  I  had.  I 
went  careful  after  that  and  lost  more.  Then  in  despair  I 
put  all  my  money  to  the  last  dollar  into  a  gamble  that  would 
bring  me  five  hundred  per  cent,  or  ruination.  For  a  marvel 
it  panned  out  all  right  and  I  made  a  pile.  For  the  next 
couple  of  months  everything  I  touched  turned  to  gold,  and  I 
became  a  rich  man.  .  .  .  Then  one  day  along  comes  a  man 
I'd  known  at  school, —  Sullivan,  now  on  the  Provisional 
Committee.  He  was  touring  America  to  get  support  for 
the  new  Irish  government.  The  idea  of  the  old  country 
arming  herself  and  getting  a  buzz  on  things  appealed  to  me 
some,  and  in  a  few  days  I'd  packed  my  traps  and  come  right 
over.  .  .  .  None  too  soon  either,  I  think,  because  I  tell  you 
what,  boys  —  when  the  Panther  went  to  Agadir,  I  sized 
things  up  pretty  well.  I  guess  there'll  be  a  scrap  in  Europe 
pretty  soon,  and  Ireland  will  need  every  man  if  she's  to  keep 
her  end  up.  Do  you  get  me?  What  price  armed  Neu- 
trality?" 

The  waitress  came  along  scribbling  the  bill. 


As  may  be  expected  Bernard's  action  in  joining  the  Irish 
Volunteers  did  not  long  remain  unnoticed  by  his  family. 
His  mother  called  him  to  her  room  one  day,  having,  as  she 
said,  something  very  serious  to  say  to  him.  He  had  not 
a  moment's  doubt  as  to  its  nature. 

"  Have  you  joined  the  Nationalist  Volunteers?"  she  be- 
gan directly. 

"  The  Irish  Volunteers,"  corrected  Bernard. 

"  What  does  the  old  name  matter?  "  said  Lady  Lascelles, 
irritably.  "  I  hear  they've  made  you  an  officer." 

"  Quite  true." 

"  You  should  have  consulted  your  father  before  taking  a 
step  like  that." 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  261 

"Why?" 

"  Because  he's  your  father." 

"  I  don't  see  the  force  of  the  argument." 

"  O,  Bernard,  what  a  nasty  thing  to  say!  As  if  you  didn't 
owe  everything  to  your  father,  even  your  very  existence. 
.  .  .  And  he's  the  best  of  fathers,  too.  You've  always  had 
the  best  of  everything  —  food,  clothes,  everything.  The 
best  of  education  and  careers.  .  .  .  Everything,"  she  ended, 
weakly. 

"  Well,  as  to  food  and  education  and  the  rest  of  it,  my 
father  could  scarcely  afford  to  let  his  children  go  about 
starving  or  in  rags  or  send  them  to  Christian  Brothers' 
schools.  It  wouldn't  look  well  for  a  man  in  his  position, 
would  it  ?  As  for  my  career,  it  was  forced  on  me.  I  didn't- 
want  it.  ...  And  as  for  my  existence  —  well,  the  less  said 
about  that  the  better.  He  wasn't  thinking  of  me  when  he 
married  you,  anyhow." 

"  That's  a  very  ungrateful  way  to  speak,  Bernard.  Your 
father  loves  you,  and  you  know  it,  and  it's  your  duty  to  try 
and  please  him." 

"Well,  I've  never  done  anything  to  disgrace  him." 

"These  Volunteers,  darling " 

"  Look  here,  mother,  I  have  my  own  principles  and  opin- 
ions in  these  matters.  I  don't  want  to  interfere  with  his, 
and  I  refuse  to  let  him  interfere  with  mine." 

"  But  he's  your  father." 

"  I'd  have  my  own  opinions  if  I'd  fifty  fathers." 

"  But  you  don't  know  how  annoyed  he  is,  my  darling 
boy.  I've  had  an  unpleasant  time  of  it  these  last  few  days, 
I  can  tell  you.  .  .  .  Now,  do  give  this  up,  just  to  please 
me.  I  don't  want  to  have  rows  and  unpleasantness  in  my 
home.  I  want  peace  and  quiet." 

"  Even  peace  with  dishonour?  "  said  Bernard.  "  My  dear 
mother,  if  father  objects  to  anything  I  do  he  ought  to  come 
to  me  himself  and  not  send  you  to  plead  with  me.  .  .  .  It's 
no  use  anyway.  I  have  a  right  to  my  own  principles  and  to 
think  for  myself." 


262  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Yes,  darling  boy.  Think  what  you  like.  Nobody  can 
object  to  that.  Only  don't  do  anything." 

Bernard  fairly  gasped  at  this  piece  of  advice.  What  could 
one  say  to  this  type  of  mind  ?  Where  could  it  be  grasped  ? 
And  how? 

"  Mother!  "  he  said  at  last;  "  can't  you  see  you're  asking 
me  to  be  a  liar  and  a  coward." 

"  No  darling,  I  know  my  boy  could  be  neither  of  those 
things.  I'm  only  asking  you  to  be  sensible." 

"  Mother,  I  do  believe  that  if  we'd  lived  in  Judea  in  the 
time  of  Christ,  if  I'd  told  you  I  believed  in  him  and  meant  to 
follow  him  you'd  have  tried  to  stop  me." 

"  No,  Bernard.      What  a  thing  to  say!  " 

"  O,  yes,  you  would.  And  you'd  have  said,  too,  '  Believe 
what  you  like,  but  don't  do  anything,'  meaning,  '  Be  a  Nico- 
demus  instead  of  a  Peter.'  Oh,  yes.  I  can  imagine  it  all" 

"  That's  absolutely  different,  Bernard.  Amn't  I  always 
trying  to  keep  you  to  your  religion  ?  " 

Bernard  laughed  and  kissed  her  cheek. 

"  You're  a  darling,  illogical,  old  mother,"  he  said,  and 
after  another  embrace  ran  away,  leaving  her  very  much 
puzzled. 

Sir  Eugene  had,  of  course,  been  rendered  perfectly  furious 
by  Bernard's  action,  but  he  knew  that  Bernard  with  an  in- 
come of  his  own  and  within  a  few  months  of  qualification, 
could  not  be  diverted  from  his  course  by  any  display  of 
parental  wrath.  He  had,  therefore,  decided  to  play  on  Ber- 
nard's love  for  his  mother,  and  had  driven  her  to  action  by 
grumbles  and  threats  to  disinherit  the  boy.  After  her  failure 
he  redoubled  his  threats  and  the  poor  lady  had  visions  of  her 
home  broken  up  and  her  favourite  son  a  penniless  wanderer 
over  the  face  of  the  earth.  Diffident  of  her  own  con- 
troversial abilities,  she  decided  to  secure  allies,  and  went  to 
her  old  friend,  Mrs.  Harvey,  for  advice  and  consolation. 

"  Why  not  get  Augustine  Reilly  to  speak  to  him  ?  "  said 
Mrs.  Harvey. 

Augustine  Reilly  was  a  distant  cousin  to  Lady  Lascelles. 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  263 

He  was  a  pietistic  old  bachelor  of  fifty  who  consorted  with 
priests  and  old  ladies  and  read  the  Bible,  or  rather  the  Old 
Testament,  more  assiduously  than  is  customary  among  Cath- 
olics. From  his  rare  knowledge  of  rubrics  and  ceremonial, 
he  was  supposed  to  be  a  great  theologian,  and  his  solemn 
platitude  passed  among  his  simple  relatives  for  deep  philos- 
ophy and  inspired  wisdom.  He  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a 
pompous  old  fool,  who  knew  as  much  about  theology  and 
philosophy  as  he  did  about  science  (and  the  sum  total  of  his 
knowledge  of  this  was  that  the  theory  of  evolution  was 
wicked  and  not  to  be  thought  about).  Lady  Lascelles,  how- 
ever, was  not  in  a  position  to  know  this,  and  like  most  of  her 
relatives  looked  up  to  Augustine  Reilly  with  awful  respect. 

"  Yes.  Augustine  is  just  the  man,"  said  Lady  Lascelles. 
"  Bernard,  I'm  glad  to  say,  is  getting  more  religious.  He 
talked  to  me  about  Our  Lord  the  other  day,  so  I'm  sure 
Augustine  should  be  able  to  manage  him." 

"  That's  splendid,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey.  "  I'll  say  a  few 
words  to  him  myself,  if  you  like.  I  know  just  how  these 
clever  young  men  should  be  taken,  you  know." 

"  Do.  That's  awfully  good  of  you.  Why  not  come  to 
lunch  next  Saturday?  " 

"  Delighted,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey.  "  I'll  bring  Mabel 
along,  too.  It'll  be  a  nice  birthday  treat  for  her." 

In  due  course  Saturday  arrived  and  Mrs.  Harvey  with  it. 
Mabel  was  now  twenty  years  of  age,  a  slim,  fair  haired, 
young  woman  nearly  as  tall  as  Bernard.  Her  pretty  face 
was  somewhat  pale  and  there  was  a  tired  look  about  her  eyes 
due  to  long  hours  of  office  work.  She  saw  the  sun  only  in 
the  evenings  in  summer  and  not  at  all  in  winter;  the  air  she 
breathed  was  mostly  dust;  the  food  she  ate  was  not  of  the 
best  quality,  nor  did  she  get  enough  of  it;  her  surroundings, 
both  at  home  and  at  work,  were  comfortless  and  unlovely; 
her  pay  was  small  and  her  mother  took  most  of  it;  and  she 
had  but  sixteen  days'  holiday  in  the  year:  yet  she  faced  life 
bravely  and  with  a  smile.  Bernard  liked  what  little  he  had 
seen  of  her  and  he  manoeuvred  to  have  her  beside  him  at 


264  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

lunch.  Lady  Lascelles,  however,  had  arranged  things  other- 
wise and  took  Mabel  to  herself.  Bernard  was  at  the  foot  of 
the  table  and  Mrs.  Harvey  deposited  her  bulky  form  in  the 
chair  on  his  right.  Alice  sat  on  her  mother's  left  and  op- 
posite to  Mabel,  and  Eugene  and  Sandy  were  on  Bernard's 
left.  These  two  were  deeply  absorbed  in  discussing  the 
route  by  which  they  intended  cycling  to  Bohernabrena  after 
lunch,  and  Lady  Lascelles  and  the  girls  at  the  far  end  of  the 
table  formed  a  remote  conversational  group,  so  Mrs.  Harvey 
had  Bernard  quite  at  her  mercy.  She  talked  winningly  and 
sentimentally  about  Ireland,  professing  to  hold  moderate 
political  views. 

"  I  don't  like  extremists,"  she  said.  "  I  don't  think  they're 
practical.  Mind  you,  I've  no  doubt  the  men  who  hold  ex- 
treme views  are  honest  and  self-sacrificing.  But  I  think  our 
unfortunate  country  needs  a  little  compromise  and  good- 
will." 

Bernard  had  no  desire  to  argue  and  simply  said,  "  Yes, 
yes,"  to  everything  she  said,  so  Mrs.  Harvey  was  able  to  re- 
assure Lady  Lascelles  and  to  inform  her  that  her  son  was 
a  most  reasonable  and  sensible  young  man. 

"  I'm  sure  he'll  do  well  in  his  profession,"  she  volunteered 
at  parting.  Her  visit  had  been  a  double  success,  for  there 
was  a  glittering  birthday  present  in  Mabel's  purse. 

A  few  days  later  Augustine  Reilly  called,  as  had  been  pre- 
arranged, when  Bernard  and  his  mother  were  alone  together 
at  afternoon  tea.  Bernard  knew  him  but  slightly,  for  he 
was  an  infrequent  visitor,  and  was  rather  surprised  to  see 
him.  When,  a  few  minutes  later,  Lady  Lascelles  slipped 
away  on  a  transparent  excuse  he  realized  what  was  coming 
and  determined  to  make  of  Augustine  a  terrible  warning  to 
future  missioners. 

Augustine  was  prematurely  senile  in  appearance.  The 
bald  and  shiny  crown  of  his  head  was  bordered  by  snow- 
white  locks;  his  eyes  were  rheumy;  and  his  gait  was  falter- 
ing. His  manner  was  preternatu rally  solemn  and  his  words 
were  weighted  and  spaced  out  with  silences.  He  began,  in 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  265 

a  way  he  thought  diplomatic,  to  praise  fulsomely  the  virtues 
of  youth:  its  courage,  its  vigor,  its  honesty,  its  idealism. 
But  youth,  it  appeared,  needed  the  restraint  of  experience. 
It  needed  the  guidance  of  age.  Bernard  listened  to  this 
homologue  without  any  attempt  to  conceal  his  impatience 
and  contempt.  Finally  he  took  advantage  of  a  pause  to  say: 

"  Look  here,  let's  cut  out  the  preamble.  You've  come 
here  to  advise  me  to  chuck  out  the  Volunteers,  haven't  you?  " 

Augustine  was  a  little  disconcerted  by  this  sudden  rupture 
of  the  veils  of  diplomacy,  but  he  replied  almost  immediately: 

"  Well,  frankly  I  have.  Your  dear  mother,  relying  upon 
our  time-honoured  friendship  —  a  friendship  which  began 
before  you,  Bernard,  was  born  —  has  asked  me  to  show  you 
the  .  .  .  rashness  of  the  course  you  have  recently  under- 
taken. .  .  .  Personally,  I  think  that  your  mother's  express 
disapproval  should  have  been  enough  for  you.  It  certainly 
would  have  been  for  me.  The  love  of  a  mother  for  the 
child  of  her  womb  is  the  most  wonderful  sacred  thing  in 
nature  and  entitles  her  to  a  corresponding  obedience  and 
respect." 

"  I'm  not  a  child,"  said  Bernard.  "  I've  a  right  to  decide 
my  actions  for  myself." 

"  You  are  still  a  child  to  her.  As  I  have  said,  the  love  of 
a  mother  for  the  child  of  her  womb  is  the  most  powerful 
force  in  the  universe.  Did  not  even  Our  Blessed  Lord  give 
obedience  to  his  mother  ?  " 

"  She  didn't  try  to  interfere  with  his  mission." 

"  My  boy,  don't  let  us  quibble.  A  mother's  love  is  an 
ever-present  love.  It  makes  her  always  anxious  for  the  safety 
of  her  child.  The  thought  that  he  may  be  in  danger  is  a  pain 
to  her.  We  are  bound  to  consider  this  in  any  action  we 
contemplate.  .  .  .  Moreover,  your  action  tends  to  disturb 
the  peace  and  harmony  of  the  household  over  which  she 
rules." 

"  I  can't  help  that,"  said  Bernard.  "  I'm  going  to  do 
what  I  think  right.  If  other  people  upset  themselves  about 
it  it's  their  own  look  out." 


266  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  My  boy,  it  is  never  right  to  disturb  the  peace  of  a  happy 
home.  '  My  little  children,  let  you  love  one  another.' 
Those  are  the  words  of  Christ.  Christ  came  to  this  earth 
to  preach  the  gospel  of  peace  and  love,  and  woe  to  those 
who  infringe  God's  peace !  " 

"  As  well  as  I  remember,  Christ  said :  '  I  come  to  bring, 
not  peace,  but  a  sword,"  retorted  Bernard.  Augustine  was 
a  little  nonplussed  by  this,  but  his  stock  of  cliches  was  in- 
exhaustible. 

"  The  devil  can  quote  scripture  to  his  purpose,"  he  said. 

"  Why  did  you  quote  it  then  ?  "  said  Bernard. 

Augustine  for  a  moment  was  at  a  loss  how  to  continue. 
At  last  he  resumed  with  his  eternal  tag: 

"  The  love  of  a  mother  for  the  child  of  ..." 

But  here  Bernard  interrupted  him. 

"  I  wish  you'd  drop  that  highly  indecent  phrase,"  he  said. 

"  Very  well,  my  boy,  if  you  wish,"  said  Augustine,  blandly. 
"  But  I  wish  I  could  get  you  to  see  how  wrongly  you  are 
acting  in  opposing  the  wishes  of  your  parents  —  those  to 
whom,  after  God,  you  owe  your  first  duty." 

"  I  deny  that,"  said  Bernard.  "  My  first  duty,  after  my 
duty  to  God,  is  to  myself,  and  my  next  is  to  my  country." 

"  Yes.  And  you  can  best  serve  your  country  not  by  fol- 
lowing the  lead  of  rebels  and  anarchists,  but  by  obeying  the 
law  and  your  parents.  He  who  sets  himself  against  the  law, 
remember,  sets  himself  against  God." 

"  Look  here,"  said  Bernard,  "  I'm  fed  up  with  you.  You 
simply  don't  know  what  you're  blithering  about.  You  may 
be  a  very  good  man  in  your  way,  but  it's  a  rotten  way. 
Good  people  like  you  are  the  curse  of  the  world.  It  was 
good  people  like  you  who  put  Socrates  to  death,  crucified 
Christ,  imprisoned  Galileo,  and  burnt  the  library  of  Alex- 
andria. You've  been  gassing  a  lot  about  Christ  just  now, 
but  what  would  you  have  said  of  Him  if  you'd  been  a  re- 
spectable Jew  of  His  own  time?  You'd  have  said,  'What 
a  wicked  man  this  Christ  is!  He  attacks  our  established 
customs,  reviles  our  priests,  breaks  our  laws,  gives  the  poor 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  267 

thoughts  above  their  station.  He's  an  anarchist,  a  socialist, 
an  anti-cleric.  Kill  the  scoundrel.'  That's  what  you'd  have 
said." 

"  I  should  have  said  nothing  of  the  kind,"  said  Augustine. 
"  I  consider  you  a  very  impertinent  young  man." 

"Impertinent!"  said  Bernard.  "Well,  I  like  that. 
W^ho  asked  you  to  come  and  meddle  with  my  affairs?  The 
insolence  of  old  people  is  astounding.  They  -poke  their 
noses  in  where  they  aren't  wanted  and  then  stand  on  their 
dignity  if  they  get  it  in  the  neck."  He  suddenly  rose,  and, 
changing  his  tone  to  one  of  earnest  solicitude,  said :  "  But 
I'm  forgetting  my  duties  as  host.  I  can  recommend  these 
hot  cakes  ...  or  perhaps  you'd  prefer  some  of  this  chocolate 
cake  .  .  .  No  ?  Then  let  me  get  you  some  more  tea  ?  " 

But  his  attempt  to  mitigate  the  cruelty  of  the  blows  he 
had  dealt  was  a  failure.  Augustine  was  implacable.  From 
Christian  duty  he  blessed  Bernard  henceforward  in  his 
prayers,  but  he  never  forgave  him  in  his  heart. 

The  consequences  of  Bernard's  intransigeance  fell  heaviest 
on  his  mother  who  was  now  deprived  of  what  little  conjugal 
affection  still  remained  to  her.  Bernard,  himself,  was 
treated  by  his  father  with  coldness  and  silence,  but  this 
worried  him  little,  if  at  all,  for  he  passed  his  final  examina- 
tion in  the  following  March  and  set  about  finding  a  house 
for  himself  at  once. 

6 

"  The  Lord  has  delivered  them  into  our  hands,"  said 
O'Flaherty  triumphantly,  and  crumpling  the  newspaper  into 
a  ball  addressed  himself  to  his  breakfast. 

Mr.  Asquith  had  announced  a  new  solution  of  the  problem 
in  Ireland  a  few  days  ago,  namely  the  partition  of  the  coun- 
try. Mr.  Redmond  had  accepted  it  and  Sir  Edward  Carson 
had  contemptuously  refused  the  concession,  so  a  vital  part 
of  the  national  claim  had  been  abandoned  without  result. 

"  This  ought  to  settle  the  Party's  hash  for  good  and  all," 
said  O'Flaherty. 


268  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Stephen,  on  the  other  side  of  the  table,  looked  gloomy. 

"  It's  a  pity,"  he  said.  "  It  sets  up  an  issue  between  us  at 
once,  and  our  one  hope  of  achieving  anything  is  in  unity. 
Why  can't  they  be  trusted  to  be  strong  even  for  a  minute? 
Why  can't  they  use  us  to  put  pressure  on  that  quaking,  shift- 
ing, bulliable  government  ?  Why  can't  they  learn  something 
from  Carson  ?  " 

"  Because  what  little  good  was  ever  in  them  has  been 
sapped  by  Westminster  air  and  ministerial  breakfasts,"  said 
O'Flaherty.  "  May  it  poison  them  outright,"  he  added. 

"  Well,  it'll  give  a  stimulus  to  our  recruiting  anyhow," 
said  Stephen.  "  But  what  we  want  now  is  arms." 

When  they  had  finished  their  meal  Stephen  asked 
O'Flaherty  what  he  intended  to  do  that  day. 

"  Going  to  meet  a  girl,"  said  O'Flaherty. 

Stephen  gave  a  snort  of  contempt. 

"  You're  some  ascetic,  Ward,"  said  O'Flaherty.  "  You 
never  smoke  or  drink  or  make  love.  Have  you  ever  been 
human,  I  wonder  ?  " 

"  Irishmen  really  haven't  time  for  these  things,"  replied 
Stephen.  "  With  our  country  in  the  state  she  is  she  requires 
our  undivided  attention.  I  gave  up  all  notion  of  enjoyment 
long  ago.  There  was  a  girl  fell  in  love  with  me  once,  and  I 
took  some  sort  of  a  fancy  to  her,  too.  But  she  was  a  fool, 
and  I  frightened  her  off  by  talking  philosophy  at  her.  .  .  . 
You  can't  be  human  and  completely  efficient,  you  know. 
Take  our  little  crowd  for  instance.  Good  stuff  every  one 
of  them,  but  not  one  but  has  his  weakness  to  distract  him. 
W^ith  Crowley  and  McGurk  it's  women,  with  O'Dwyer  it's 
verse-making,  with  Lascelles  it's  vanity  and  dancing,  and  so 
on.  ...  I  wish  we  could  make  that  man  Moore  shake  off 
his  confounded  pessimism.  He'd  be  a  real  acquisition." 

"  You've  got  very  unsound  dope,"  said  O'Flaherty.  "  It 
won't  be  supermen  who'll  set  this  country  free,  and  I'd 
rather  have  her  free  than  sober,  anyhow." 

"  The  two  hang  together,  I  think,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Well,"  said  O'Flaherty,  "  I  may  be  a  man  of  low  ideals, 


THE  RUSTY  SWORD  269 

but  I've  a  pretty  good  notion  which  task  is  easiest.  .  .  . 
Is  anyone  on  the  committee  seeing  about  getting  guns?  " 

7 

So  Ireland  once  more  drew  the  sword  that  had  been  rust- 
ing in  its  sheath  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  brandished  it  in 
the  face  of  the  enemy.  For  a  moment  she  seemed  astonished 
at  her  own  audacity.  At  the  end  of  1913  no  more  than  ten 
thousand  men  had  enrolled  in  the  Volunteers,  but  confidence 
came  gradually  and  in  five  months  more  their  numbers  had 
increased  sevenfold.  Then  came  a  sudden  unexpected  rush 
of  recruits.  In  two  months  the  muster-rolls  were  doubled 
and  men  were  marching  and  drilling  on  hillside,  plain,  and 
valley,  in  town  and  village,  all  over  the  face  of  Ireland. 

To  Bernard,  recent  adherent  to  the  cause,  it  was  a  suf- 
ficiently moving  spectacle.  To  O'Dwyer  it  was  well  nigh 
miraculous. 

"  I  wish  I  could  make  you  understand  my  feeling  in  all 
this,"  he  said  to  Bernard  one  day  as  they  watched  a  company 
manoeuvring  in  County  Dublin.  "  When  I  was  a  boy,  I 
dreamed  of  nothing  else  but  a  day  of  arming  and  revenge, 
and  I  thought  everyone  else  was  the  same.  As  I  grew  up,  I 
met  with  nothing  but  disappointment.  Those  were  the 
deadest  days  in  Irish  History,  when  even  Home  Rule  was 
barely  spoken  of,  and  as  Home  Rule  came  to  the  front  and 
a  tame  bloodless  winning  of  a  fraction  of  our  rights  seemed 
to  be  all  the  people  wanted,  I  thought  life  a  pretty  humdrum 
affair.  .  .  .  And  now  to  see  this.  To  see  the  spirit  of  the 
people.  To  see  armies  rising  out  of  the  earth.  To  hear 
Irish  war-songs  again.  To  see  men  drilling  by  moonlight, 
as  I  did  the  other  night.  .  .  .  Visions  of  Ninety-Eight, 
Lascelles.  .  .  .  Who  would  have  thought  it?  After  seven 
centuries  of  subjection.  Lord,  but  we're  a  wonderful 
people!  .  .  .  Poland  is  doing  nothing  like  this  —  or  Fin- 
land. .  .  .  Thank  God,  that  we're  alive  this  day." 

"  And  to  be  young  ..."  said  Bernard. 


CHAPTER  XI 

WAITING 


IT  was  some  time  before  Bernard  fulfilled  his  promise  to 
call  on  Austin  Mallow.  He  had  no  liking  for  the  dis- 
ease-worn fanatic,  and  always  experienced  an  odd  uncanny 
feeling  of  uneasiness  in  his  presence.  However,  one  evening 
O'Dwyer  induced  both  him  and  Stephen  to  pay  the  poet  a 
visit. 

Austin  lived  with  his  mother,  brother,  and  sister  in  a 
small  house  on  the  Rathgar  Road.  Mrs.  Mallow  had  a 
small  private  income  on  which  she  supported  her  invalid 
elder  son,  her  incapable  second  son,  and  her  unmarriageable 
daughter.  Austin's  poetry  never  brought  him  in  a  farthing, 
and  Brian  was  still  making  futile  efforts  to  pass  his  final 
engineering  examination.  Theodosia,  their  sister,  was  an 
ill-made,  pasty-faced  unhealthy  girl  who  wore  spectacles 
and  bedroom  slippers  and  spent  most  of  her  day  reading. 
In  a  futile  effort  to  assist  their  mother's  finances  they  ran  a 
monthly  (more  strictly  an  occasional)  review  called  Manan- 
nan.  Austin  was  editor  and  contributed  his  poems;  Brian 
was  manager  and  contributed  an  occasional  political  polemic  ; 
Theodosia  was  office-boy  and  contributed  stray  verses  and 
stories  as  mystical  as  Austin's  poems.  The  financial  status 
of  the  paper  can  easily  be  imagined. 

\Vhen  O'Dwyer  and  his  friends  arrived  they  were  ad- 
mitted by  Brian  who  welcomed  them  with  crushingly  hearty 
handclasps  into  a  hall  lighted  by  a  small  oil  lamp.  As  he 
hung  up  his  hat  and  coat  Bernard  noticed  a  faint  aromatic 
odour  in  the  air,  which  became  suddenly  intensified  as  Brian 
threw  open  a  door  to  the  left.  Bernard  now  saw  into  a  room 
tfjo 


WAITING  271 

dimly  lighted  by  two  oriental  lamps  and  cloudy  with  tobacco 
smoke  which  evidently  was  the  source  of  the  aroma  he  had 
observed.  The  mixed  furnishing  of  the  room  produced  a 
very  bizarre  effect.  There  were  a  table  and  chairs  of  mahog- 
any of  very  ordinary  pattern,  and  numerous  easy-chairs. 
Along  with  them  were  a  couple  of  Turkish  divans,  and  in 
places  the  floor  was  heaped  with  brilliantly  coloured  cushions. 
There  was  no  carpet,  but  its  place  was  taken  by  rugs  of  vari- 
ous shapes,  colours  and  kinds,  from  Donegal,  Axminster  and 
India.  The  windows  were  hung  with  curtains  of  Indian 
stuff,  very  fine  and  flaming  with  colour.  In  one  corner 
stood  a  Ninety-Eight  pike  alongside  a  Japanese  umbrella 
and  an  old-fashioned  rifle.  The  wall  opposite  to  the  win- 
dows was  adorned  with  three  engravings  and  a  tiger's  skin, 
and  over  the  mantelpiece  were  an  antelope's  head  and  an 
engraving  of  the  trial  of  Robert  Emmet.  Most  of  the  aro- 
matic haze  came  from  a  hookah  smoked  by  Austin,  who  sat 
curled  up  in  an  enormous  armchair  close  to  the  fireplace. 
Opposite  to  him  sat  Theodosia  smoking  a  cigarette,  and  on  a 
divan  at  his  left  sat  a  small  and  rather  corpulent  man  smok- 
ing a  long  churchwarden  pipe,  who  was  introduced  as  Mr. 
Umpleby.  Mrs.  Mallow  did  not  appear. 

Brian  bustled  about  getting  chairs  and  cushions  for  the 
visitors,  and  when  all  were  comfortable  he  came  round  with 
new  churchwardens  and  a  terra-cotta  bowl  containing  a 
spicy  sandy  tobacco. 

"  Well,  as  I  was  saying  ..."  said  Mr.  Umpleby,  and 
he  resumed  the  stojy  in  which  the  entry  of  the  visitors  had 
evidently  interrupted  him. 

He  was  a  little  man  with  the  beginnings  of  a  paunch,  fat 
cheeks,  and  a  moustache  and  prominent  canine  teeth  that 
gave  him  a  comic  resemblance  to  a  walrus.  O'Dwyer 
already  knew  him  slightly  and  by  repute.  He  was  a  little 
over  thirty  years  of  age  and  lived  on  a  small  private  income. 
He  was  known  to  be  extremely  vain,  but  his  vanity  took  the 
harmless  and  rather  humble  form  of  pluming  himself  on  the 
great  people  —  poets,  artists,  politicians,  rather  than  aristo- 


272  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

crats  —  with  whom  he  scraped  up  acquaintance.  After  this 
his  principal  characteristic  was  his  habit  of  telling  long, 
tiresome  stories  full  of  parentheses,  and  of  parentheses  within 
parentheses,  such  as  could  only  be  simplified  by  process  of 
Algebra,  and  in  which  he  frequently  became  so  involved  as 
to  forget  the  main  story  altogether.  He  had  taken  no  active 
part  in  politics  until  the  formation  of  the  Volunteers,  into 
which  movement  he  had  flung  himself  with  astonishing 
vigour.  His  present  story  seemed  to  be  an  apologia  for  this 
step. 

"  As  I  was  saying,  the  whole  world  •{  or  at  any  rate  the 
whole  civilized  world  (which  is  what  really  counts  in  these 
matters)  }•  seemed  to  be  about  to  perish  of  vanity  and  inani- 
tion, when  on  an  instant  this  new  movement  [a  movement 
which  •{  in  my  opinion  (and  I  give  my  opinion  in  all  humil- 
ity) }•  was  -{with  all  its  faults  (and  they  were  many  — 
almost  as  many  indeed  as  its  virtues)  }•  at  any  rate  dis- 
tinguished by  sincerity  and  a  wish  for  achievement]  sprang 
into  being.  Thereupon  ..." 

"  You've  let  your  pipe  go  out,"  said  Theodosia. 

"  Dear  me,  so  I  have,"  said  Mr.  Umpleby,  and  in  the 
pause  necessitated  by  remedying  this  misfortune  Austin  took 
a  sheet  of  paper  from  his  pocket  and  said : 

"Would  you  like  to  hear  my  latest?" 

There  was  general  polite  assent  from  the  company,  and  a 
rapturous  "  Yes,  please"  from  Theodosia,  and  Austin,  clear- 
ing his  throat,  began: 

"  IGNIS  IMMORTALIS 
"  Seven  spears  in  the  day  of  light 

Shall   avenge  with  might  our  blood   and   tears, 
Seven  seers  shall  in  death  indict 

The  blasting  blight  of  the  bitter  years." 

There  was  a  terrible  energy  in  the  voice  issuing  from  so 
frail  a  frame,  and  Bernard  noticed  a  feverish  gleam  in  the 
eyes  set  so  deep  in  their  sockets.  Austin  went  on  to  the  sec- 
ond stanza: 


WAITING  273 

"  Seven  victims  upon  the  altar 

Shall  sing  a  psalter  of  faith  renewed. 
The  flame  re-kindled  no  more  shall  falter 
Nor  word-wise  palter  the  multitude." 

"  Magnificent !  "  cried  Umpleby,  fulsomely. 

"  What  does  it  mean  ?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  What  it  says,  of  course,"  said  Austin,  contemptuously. 

Then  seeing  Bernard's  lips  twitch  slightly,  he  added: 

"  You  may  smile.  I'd  expect  it  of  you.  But  some  poems 
are  prophecies,  and  perhaps  you'll  understand  this  one  in  a 
few  years'  time." 

"  I  say,  Austin,"  broke  in  O'Dwyer,  "  I've  discovered  a 
new  poet  who'd  be  exactly  to  your  liking.  He  prefers  to 
remain  anonymous,  but  he  gave  me  a  poem  to  submit  to 
your  opinion." 

"  Read  it  to  me,"  commanded  Austin. 

O'Dwyer  took  a  folded  sheet  of  paper  from  his  pocket, 
and  to  Bernard's  amazement  read  as  follows: 

"  AISLING 
"A  Vision  in  the  Void  of  Night! 

The  moon  her  face  in  fear  did  veil; 
The  stars  did  shudder  at  the  sight: 
The  firmament  did  quail. 

"  And  through  earth's  rent  and  rotting  rocks 

The  boiling  billows  broke  and  burst, 
Whereupon  cold  flames  in  feral  flocks 
Assuaged  their  thorny  thirst. 

"  Black  lightnings  seared  the  sallow  air, 
The  quaking  sun  dissolved  in  gloom. 
Then  oozed  from  out  its  loathsome  lair 
The  pallid  Worm  of  Doom!  " 

"  By  Jove !  "  cried  Austin  in  tremendous  excitement, 
"  that's  wonderful !  A  true  vision !  .  .  .  That  was  written 
by  a  great  poet." 

"  Marvellous !  "  echoed  Umpleby. 

"  I  confess  I   don't  see  anything  in  it,"  said  O'Dwyer, 


274  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  but  then  mysticism  isn't  in  my  line.  I  suppose  there  must 
be  a  deep  meaning  in  it  somewhere." 

"  The  meaning  is  quite  plain  to  any  one  who  knows  any- 
thing of  mysticism,"  said  Austin.  "  You  must  ask  that 
young  poet  to  come  and  see  me." 

"  I  remember  once,"  began  Umpleby,  "  a  most  extraor- 
dinary experience  occurred  to  me.  I  was  ..." 

But  here  Brian  cut  in  with : 

"  Look  here,  everybody.     What  about  drinkables?  " 

He  wheeled  forward  a  little  table  on  which  were  a  de- 
canter of  whiskey,  a  siphon  of  soda-water,  bottles  of  stout,  a 
bottle  of  white  wine,  and  glasses.  The  kettle  on  the  fire 
had  just  boiled,  and  Theodosia  began  to  brew  coffee  in  the 
urn  on  the  hearth.  When  every  one  was  served  with  his 
particular  drink  Umpleby  had  forgotten  his  story,  and  Austin 
launched  into  a  dissertation  on  politics. 

"  This  generation  needs  blood,"  he  said.  "  We  alone 
amongst  all  the  generations  of  Irishmen  have  undergone  no 
sufferings  in  the  cause  of  freedom.  We  have  submitted 
tamely  to  the  yoke ;  the  mark  of  slavery  is"  upon  us ;  and  only 
by  blood  can  it  be  wiped  out." 

"  I  don't  see  much  sign  of  slavish  acceptance  in  the  Vol- 
unteers," interrupted  Bernard. 

"  A  parade  army,"  said  Austin.  "  Until  they  have  taken 
and  given  blood  they  can  be  nothing  but  a  political  demon- 
stration —  like  the  Orangemen.  Until  England  strikes  at 
us  we  remain  as  we  are :  an  army  of  flag-wavers." 

"  If  England  strikes  we'll  crumple,"  said  Bernard.  "  I 
regard  the  Volunteers  as  a  defensive  force,  of  more  value  to 
stand  up  against  political  bullying  than  to  take  military 
action." 

"Nonsense!"  said  Austin.  "No  bargaining  for  me! 
Martyr's  blood  is  of  more  value  than  rifles." 

Bernard  said  no  more.  As  he  watched  that  emaciated 
body  eaten  away  by  disease  (Austin  was  suffering  from  a 
slow  internal  cancer)  jerk  for  the  blood-lust  of  the  restless 
tortured  spirit  it  harboured,  he  realized  that  he  might  as  well 


WAITING  275 

argue  with  a  lunatic.  There  was  something  uncanny  about 
Austin's  drawn  yellow  cheeks  and  great  luminous  eyes,  and 
Bernard  was  relieved  by  the  interruption  of  Umpleby's 
commonplace  voice  beginning  a  new  parenthetic  story. 

At  ten  o'clock  Stephen  arose  and  said: 

"  I  must  go.     Good-night." 

It  was  the  first  time  he  had  spoken  that  evening.  Bernard 
and  O'Dwyer  decided  to  accompany  him,  and  in  a  few 
minutes  they  found  themselves  in  the  street. 

"  Some  entertainment!  "  said  O'Dwyer. 

"  That  poem  of  yours  did  some  useful  work  tonight," 
said  Stephen.  "  It  confirmed  a  suspicion  of  mine." 

"  Which?  "  asked  O'Dwyer. 

"  Austin  Mallow  is  a  liar,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Exactly  what  I  wanted  to  prove,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

"  Then  that  poem  ...    ?  "  questioned  Bernard. 

"...  Was  my  own,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Look  here, 
boys,  the  street's  no  place  for  metaphysical  discussion.  Let's 
drop  into  my  place  for  a  while  and  I'll  tell  you  about  a  dis- 
covery I've  made." 

O'Dwyer's  father  lived  at  Stephen's  Green,  so  they  caught 
a  passing  tram  and  arrived  there  in  five  minutes.  O'Dwyer 
let  them  in  by  latchkey  and  led  them  to  his  sanctum,  a  com- 
fortable little  room  in  the  return  part  of  the  house. 

"  Draw  up  your  chairs,  boys,"  he  said,  lighting  the  gas 
stove.  "And  what  about  a  decent  smoke?  .  .  .  I'm  half 
poisoned  with  that  muck  of  Mallow's."  He  passed  Bernard 
the  tobacco-jar  from  the  mantel-piece. 

"  Now,  what  about  this  discovery?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  Well,"  said  O'Dwyer,  blowing  forth  a  dense  cloud  of 
tobacco  smoke,  "  about  a  month  ago  I  bought  a  splendid 
book :  Jean  Christophe  by  Remain  Rolland.  It's  an  enor- 
mous work  —  ten  volumes  of  it,  all  packed  with  psychology 
and  philosophy.  But  in  the  whole  thing  one  sentence  stood 
out  for  me  that  seemed  to  be  an  entirely  new  discovery  and 
to  be  quite  shatteringly  true.  It  was  this:  '  Every  nation 
has  its  lie,  which  it  calls  its  idealism,'  and  the  hero  of  the 


276  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

novel  exposes  in  turn  the  German  lie  and  the  French  lie.  I 
found  myself  immediately  wondering:  'What  is  the  Irish 
lie?'  and  thinking:  'If  we  can  discover  it  and  rid  our- 
selves of  it  we  shall  have  taken  a  definite  step  on  the  road 
to  freedom.'  Well,  I  set  myself  to  the  discovery.  First,  I 
asked  myself,  what  did  we  call  our  idealism.  I  found  that 
hard  to  answer,  because  the  word  has  been  so  shockingly 
misused.  Then  I  remembered  that  Jean  Christophe  dis- 
covered the  French  and  German  lies  in  their  art,  and  I  set 
myself  to  look  for  the  lie  in  ours.  The  question  at  once 
arose:  what  is  Irish  art?  In  the  first  place,  it  is  almost  en- 
tirely literary.  Our  music,  painting,  and  architecture  are 
almost  negligible.  Then  as  to  our  literature,  a  further 
question  arose.  We  could  not  fairly  be  restricted  to  Gaelic 
literature,  but  to  how  much  of  English  literature  might  we 
lay  claim?  Some  of  our  greatest  geniuses  —  Sheridan, 
Goldsmith,  Wilde,  Shaw,  for  example  —  deliberately  cut 
themselves  off  from  Ireland  and  wrote  of  England  for  Eng- 
land. These  I  rejected.  I  felt  we  could  only  claim  those 
who  had  written  of  Ireland  and  for  Ireland,  or  took  their 
inspiration  from  Ireland.  I  think  we  might  go  so  far  as  to 
claim  Swift  among  these.  Well,  now  I  took  a  survey  of 
our  whole  literature.  First,  there  was  the  old  Gaelic  stuff : 
the  Epic  of  the  Tain,  and  the  Fenian  Legends,  and  some 
minor  things  of  the  same  period:  that  fine  old  saga,  the 
Wars  of  the  Gael  and  Gall,  too:  and  St.  Patrick's  Con- 
fession: and  St.  Columba's  Works  —  these  are  just  samples. 
My  knowledge  is  a  little  fragmentary,  I'm  afraid,  for  the 
next  thing  that  I  can  point  to  is  the  History  of  the  Four 
Masters.  Then  you  come  to  the  product  of  the  worst  times 
in  our  history,  the  Penal  times,  and  it's  all  full  of  fierce  and 
sorrowful  songs  like  Jeremiads.  After  that,  the  next  things 
you  hit  on  are  in  English :  Tone's  Autobiography,  Carleton's 
novels,  and  so  on.  Then  you  get  the  Young  Irelanders: 
Mitchel,  and  Davis  and  Mangan.  Griffin  and  Kickham  and 
a  few  more  follow  them,  and  so  we  reach  modern  days. 
"  Now  let's  just  glance  back  at  the  quality  of  all  this  stuff 


WAITING  277 

of  the  past  before  we  look  too  close  at  the  moderns.  The 
early  epics  are  the  product  of  the  great  men  of  a  great  people. 
They've  all  that  bigness  and  spaciousness  that  you  feel  in 
really  great  art.  The  Tain  is  equal  to  the  Iliad  and  better 
than  the  Aeneid.  The  Wars  of  the  Gael  and  Gall  is  quite 
up  to  Herodotus,  and  the  Four  Masters  run  Thucydides 
pretty  close.  (Lord,  what  the  world  loses  in  not  knowing 
of  these!)  Some  of  the  poetry  of  the  Penal  times  is  won- 
derful stuff.  Some  of  it  is  equal  to  Keats  at  his  best,  and 
there  are  patches  that  smack  of  Browning:  very  little  de- 
scends to  the  level  of  Tennyson.  Then  look  at  Tone's  Auto- 
biography: it's  the  autobiography  of  one  of  the  greatest 
statesmen,  finest  men,  and  heartiest  humourists  that  ever 
lived :  a  really  great  work.  I  keep  it  on  the  same  shelf  with 
Shakespeare,  Rabelais,  Plato,  and  Robinson  Crusoe.  Carle- 
ton's  a  big  man  too,  but  Mitchel's  bigger,  and  Ferguson  and 
Mangan  are  on  a  line  with  the  great  poets  of  any  country. 
Everything  I've  mentioned  up  to  this  is  great  stuff:  the 
kind  of  stuff  that  makes  you  catch  your  breath  and  say: 
'  This  is  the  thing.'  The  work  of  the  great  men  of  a  great 
people. 

"  Well,  now  I  looked  at  the  work  of  modern  days,  and 
what  did  I  see?  Not  badness,  not  clumsiness;  no  real  fault 
you  could  point  to;  but  smallness.  Apart  from  Russell  and 
Yeates,  and  including  Synge,  no  one  in  Ireland  of  recent 
years  has  produced  a  work  of  decent  size.  Our  much- 
boasted  revival  has  produced  hardly  anything  but  short  plays, 
short  stories,  and  a  bewildering  multitude  of  tiny  booklets  of 
microscopic  verses.  You'd  find  it  hard  to  point  to  a  flaw  in 
any  of  them  (they  aren't  big  enough  to  make  big  mistakes), 
but  the  smallness  and  mediocrity  of  the  stuff  is  appalling. 
That's  the  great  Renaissance  we  hear  so  much  about." 

"  Yes,"  said  Stephen.  "  That  may  be  all  quite  true,  but 
where's  this  lie  you're  talking  about?  " 

"  The  lie,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  is  not  in  the  smallness  of  the 
literature,  but  in  the  reason  for  it.  I'm  coming  to  that 
presently.  But  there's  one  other  thing  I  want  you  to  notice, 


278  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  that  is  that  half  of  the  poetry  turned  out  is  what  they 
call  '  mystic,'  and  half  the  remainder  is  what  I  call  '  misty.' 
As  for  the  second  kind,  you  know  the  sort  of  stuff  I  mean: 
poems  full  of  '  white  mist  on  the  brown  bog,'  and  that  kind 
of  tosh.  The  other's  harder  to  deal  with.  You  see  it's 
quite  unintelligible,  and  if  you  say  so  you're  told  you're  unfit 
to  criticize.  However,  after  a  careful  examination  into  a 
number  of  these  poems,  I  came  to  this  conclusion:  that  they 
really  mean  nothing,  and  that  anyone  acquainted  with  the 
laws  of  prosody  and  gifted  with  a  muddled  head  could  pro- 
duce them  automatically  by  self-hypnosis  induced  by  rhyme 
and  alliteration.  I  immediately  decided  to  try  the  experi- 
ment on  myself,  and  produced  the  monstrosity  you  heard  to- 
night. I  had  no  idea  in  my  head  when  I  sat  down.  I 
honestly  assure  you  of  that.  I  wrote  down  the  first  line  that 
came  into  my  head  and  the  rest  were  simply  fitted  in  to  suit 
the  rhyme,  and  I  tacked  on  to  every  noun  the  first  alliterative 
adjective  I  could  think  of.  Voila  tout!  Mallow  thought 
the  result  a  great  poem  and  thought  he  saw  a  meaning 
in  it." 

"  If  you  were  dishonest  enough,"  remarked  Bernard,  "  you 
could  make  a  book  of  these  things  and  pass  as  a  mystic 
poet." 

"  And  I  wouldn't  be  the  first.  .  .  .  Now  do  you  see  the 
lie  ?  When  nine-tenths  of  a  country's  literature  is  character- 
ized by  mistiness,  mystery  and  brevity,  what  conclusion  do 
you  come  to  ?  There's  no  '  imagination  '  in  mistiness ;  it's 
mere  sentimentality.  There's  nothing  in  their  mysticism  but 
muddled  and  slovenly  thinking  (Mallow,  for  instance, 
couldn't  think  clearly  if  he  tried).  And  as  for  their  brevity 
—  they're  not  men  enough  to  produce  work  of  any  size. 
That's  the  long  and  the  short  of  it.  Why  do  you  think 
there's  so  much  poetry  produced  in  Ireland?  Because  it's 
the  easiest  form  in  which  to  say  nothing  impressively. 

"  Well,  there's  our  lie.  We've  been  posing  as  a  nation  of 
poetical,  unwordly  idealists,  and  we're  really  a  nation  of 


WAITING  279 

slackers.     Our  literature  gives  us  away:  it's  the  work  of  the 
lazy  men  of  a  lazy  nation." 

"  Our  laziness  is  a  bad  sign,"  said  Stephen,  "  but  we're 
getting  over  it.  ...  Your  poem  showed  up  something  much 
worse  tonight.  The  man  who  could  pretend  to  see  a  mean- 
ing in  that  drivel  is  a  liar,  and  a  self-deceiver.  .  .  .  Did 
you  listen  to  his  own  poem  ?  " 

"  Not  particularly,"  replied  the  others. 

"  He  called  it  a  prophecy.  It's  easy  to  prophesy  what 
one  intends  to  carry  out.  .  .  .  We'd  better  keep  our  eyes 
open." 

2 

239,  HARCOURT  STREET, 
DUBLIN, 
2Oth  May,  1914. 
My  dear  Jack : 

I  read  your  article  in  the  Twentieth  Century  on  recent 
events  in  Ireland  with  great  interest,  but  you've  been  guilty 
of  one  inaccuracy.  The  Irish  Volunteers  were  not  founded 
to  "  protect  the  law  and  defend  Parliament  against  those 
who  would  overawe  it  by  armed  force"  The  protection  of 
your  Parliament  is  none  of  our  business,  and  Carson  can 
bully  it  as  much  as  he  likes  for  all  we  care.  In  fact,  our 
principal  function  is  to  do  a  little  bullying  of  that  same 
august  assembly  on  our  own  account.  Your  Press  and  the 
Unionist  Press  over  here  has  been  preaching  at  us  for  the  last 
fifty  years  that  we  can  only  obtain  our  autonomy  by  resort- 
ing to  Constitutional  methods.  Well,  we  took  them  at  their 
word,  and  what's  the  result?  As  soon  as  these  methods 
begin  to  achieve  anything,  the  law-and-order  party  flouts  the 
Constitution,  starts  a  rebel  army,  sets  up  a  Provisional  Gov- 
ernment, seduces  the  British  army,  and  threatens  to  call  in 
the  help  of  the  German  Emperor.  No  more  Constitutional- 
ism for  us,  thank  you.  The  Curragh  mutiny  and  the  Larne 
gun-running  have  killed  it. 

Would  you  like  to  have  a  glance  at  Ireland  as  she  really 


a8o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

is?  I'm  going  north  in  June  with  my  brother  Eugene  and  a 
man  called  McGurk  to  Cloughaneely ,  an  Irish-speaking  dis- 
trict, and  we'll  be  delighted  if  you'll  form  one  of  the  party. 

You  may  notice  I've  changed  my  address.  I've  taken  the 
hall-flat  of  this  house,  consisting  of  consulting-room,  dining- 
room,  sitting-room,  and  bed-room,  with  use  of  kitchen,  and 
I'm  busy  looking  over  my  blind  for  patients.  I've  engaged  a 
servant,  too,  an  Englishman,  a  perfectly  priceless  person 
called  Swathythe.  Your  "  lower  orders  "  make  much  bet- 
ter servants  than  ours.  They're  more  servile. 

Hoping  to  see  you  in  June,  if  you  aren't  married  by  then, 
I  remain,  and  the  rest  of  it, 

BERNARD  LASCELLES. 

This  letter  brought  Willoughby  over  to  Dublin  at  the  end 
of  May.  Bernard  took  him  all  over  the  city,  showing  him 
the  great  public  buildings,  the  treasures  in  the  museum,  the 
harbour,  the  slums,  and,  by  special  request,  a  company  of 
Volunteers  drilling  at  Kimmage,  which  impressed  Wil- 
loughby mightily. 

Two  days  later  the  party,  with  the  addition  of  O'Flaherty, 
left  Amiens  Street  by  the  nine  o'clock  train.  They  rattled 
above  mean  streets  and  sped  out  on  to  the  great  grassy  via- 
duct that  spans  the  inlet  of  the  sea  at  Fairview.  Over  the 
flat  hedge-bounded  fields  of  north  County  Dublin  they 
rushed,  along  the  sandy  coast  of  grassy  Meath,  and  into  the 
historic  town  of  Drogheda. 

"  The  river  Boyne,"  said  McGurk  to  Willoughby. 

Willoughby  rushed  eagerly  to  look  out  of  the  carriage 
window,  but  he  seemed  disappointed  somehow. 

"  I'd  an  idea  from  the  newspapers,"  he  said,  "  that  all 
Ireland  was  camped  on  opposite  sides  of  the  river." 

"  The  Boyne  is  a  Leinster  river,"  Bernard  explained. 
"  We're  nowhere  near  Carsonland  yet." 

"  Oh  ?     I  thought  it  was  the  frontier,"  said  Willoughby. 

At  Portadown  they  had  to  change  trains,  and  Willoughby 
was  told  he  wras  now  genuinely  in  the  "  North-East  Corner." 


WAITING  281 

He  looked  around  eagerly  for  signs  of  Ulster  Volunteers, 
but  none  were  forthcoming. 

"  This  is  very  disappointing,"  he  said.  "  I  thought  the 
country  was  on  the  verge  of  civil  war  and  I  haven't  seen  as 
much  as  a  bayonet." 

"  Our  military  activities  are  carried  on  at  night,"  said 
Bernard.  "  During  the  day  we  have  our  work  to  do.  If 
you  want  to  see  what  Ulster  Volunteers  are  like,  just  look 
round  you.  That  porter  there  is  probably  one." 

Willoughby  became  round-eyed  with  interest. 

"  Yes.  He  has  a  decidedly  fanatical  look,"  he  said. 
(The  porter  was  as  commonplace  a  porter  as  could  be 
found.) 

"  Say,  Bernard,"  whispered  McGurk,  "  this  English 
friend  of  yours  is  an  awful  eejit." 

The  next  change  was  at  Strabane,  where  they  took  advan- 
tage of  an  hour's  wait  to  have  lunch,  and  Willoughby  had 
his  first  experience  of  an  Irish  country  hotel. 

"  Do  you  long  for  the  Inn  at  Deeping?  "  said  Bernard, 
as  Willoughby  picked  a  hair  out  of  the  butter. 

"  Oh,  no,"  replied  Willoughby,  politely.  "  Everything's 
very  charming." 

On  the  light  railway  they  leaped  the  Bann  and  plunged 
into  the  wildness  of  the  Western  World.  The  green 
pastures  of  Leinster  and  southeast  Ulster  were  far  behind 
them  and  they  rattled  through  a  land  of  bog  and  rocks.  On 
and  on  they  clattered  and  jolted,  winding  along  in  a  ser- 
pentine track,  now  shrieking  through  rocky  cuttings,  now 
puffing  peacefully  over  the  open  bog.  Station  after  station 
fled  past  them,  mere  platforms  of  wood  standing  out  of  the 
heathery  waste.  To  their  left  Errigal,  grim  and  menacing, 
towered  over  his  brother  mountains.  To  their  right 
stretched  the  flat  surface  of  the  bog,  weird  and  lifeless  in  the 
gloaming. 

"  By  the  way,  Jack,"  said  Bernard,  "  you  must  remember 
that  you're  entering  a  democratic  country.  The  people  don't 
touch  their  hats  to  squire  here.  They  reserve  that  for  the 


282  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

priest.  You  must  shake  hands  with  them  naturally  and  as 
a  matter  of  course:  not  in  a  patronizing  way  like  a  lord  of 
the  manor  visiting  a  faithful  retainer,  or  like  a  parliamentary 
candidate  at  an  election,  but  as  one  gentleman  with  another. 
If  you  go  into  a  shop  to  buy  a  threepenny  packet  of  cigarettes, 
you  must  shake  hands  first  and  talk  about  the  news  or  the 
weather,  and  if  they  give  you  sixpence  worth  of  chocolate 
along  with  your  cigarettes,  remember  it's  a  present  and  take 
it  as  such." 

"  How  delightfully  Irish !  "  said  Willoughby. 

A  few  minutes  later  they  alighted  on  the  wind-blown 
platform  of  Cashelnagore,  and,  having  deposited  their  bag- 
gage in  a  donkey-cart,  cycled  the  three  or  four  miles  to  the 
little  village  of  Gortahork,  at  the  principal  hotel  of  which 
they  had  engaged  rooms. 

3 

Next  morning  after  breakfast  they  sat  in  the  sun  on  the 
bench  before  the  hotel  smoking  their  pipes.  An  old  woman 
hobbled  by. 

"  Maidin  breagh!  "  she  cried  in  a  hearty  voice,  a  smile 
wrinkling  all  over  her  face. 

"Ana  bhreagh"  replied  Eugene  and  McGurk  together. 

"  What  was  that?  "  asked  Willoughby. 

"  Fine  day,"  said  Eugene. 

A  labourer  going  down  the  hill  to  his  work  shouted  the 
same  salutation,  and  three  or  four  others  who  passed  in 
succession  did  likewise. 

"  They  seem  mighty  interested  in  the  weather  in  this 
locality,"  observed  O'Flaherty. 

"  No  wonder,"  said  McGurk.  "  It's  not  often  they  get 
the  chance  to  say  '  Id  breagh  '  up  here.  '  La  bog '  is  the 
usual  complaint." 

"  Say,  boys,"  said  O'Flaherty  a  little  later,  "  Willoughby's 
just  itching  to  have  a  near  view  of  the  natives.  What  about 
a  tour  of  inspection  ?  " 

All  were  agreed  and  they  set  out  at  once.     They  stopped 


WAITING  283 

at  a  small  but  crowded  shop  in  the  village  to  buy  cigarettes, 
and  Willoughby  for  the  first  time  realized  that  he  was  in  a 
foreign  country.  Nothing  was  to  be  heard  anywhere  but 
this  strange  Irish  language  of  whose  existence  he  had  been 
ignorant  until  quite  recently.  Dublin,  save  for  some  minor 
local  peculiarities,  had  seemed  but  a  part  of  his  own  country, 
where  putting  his  watch  back  twenty-five  minutes  was  the 
greatest  wrench  in  the  scheme  of  things.  Now  he  suddenly 
felt  himself  a  stranger  isolated  in  a  distant  land. 

On  Bernard  also  this  first  continuous  rush  of  the  language 
that  should  have  been  his  own  had  a  strange  effect,  but  a 
different  one.  The  sound  had  a  baffling  enchantment  for 
him  and  he  felt  an  extraordinary  desire  to  join  in  the  con- 
versation, half-expecting  that  his  native  language  would  come 
bubbling  from  his  lips  by  some  miracle  of  atmosphere  and 
will-power.  .  .  .  He  registered  an  instantaneous  resolve  to 
learn  the  language  at  once. 

McGurk,  who  spoke  Irish  fairly  fluently,  made  purchases 
for  the  rest  of  the  party  and  was  presented  with  a  parcel  of 
milk  chocolate  for  his  English  friend.  Emerging  from  the 
shop  they  encountered  O'Dwyer  and  two  other  young  men 
from  Dublin. 

"Hello!"  cried  O'Dwyer.  "What?  Is  that  Wil- 
loughby? What  brings  you  to  Cloughaneely ?  'Old  Ash- 
bury,  thy  sons  are  found  Beyond  the  Empire's  furthest 
bound,'  eh?  "  ** 

Greetings  followed.  O'Dwyer's  companions  were  two 
men  in  his  own  year,  called  Conachy  and  Leeds,  and  were  a 
striking  contrast  to  one  another.  Conachy  was  a  dark- 
haired  young  man  with  a  solemn  face  rather  like  a  horse, 
a  depressingly  polite  manner  and  a  tactful,  tentative  way  of 
speaking.  He  was  neatly  dressed  in  dark  grey  cloth.  Leeds 
on  the  other  hand  was  loud-voiced  and  self-assertive.  His 
head  was  covered  with  a  tangled  mass  of  straw-coloured 
hair,  and  he  wore  an  untidy  saffron  kilt  and  green  plaid. 
With  both  of  them  Bernard  and  his  friends  were  slightly 
acquainted.  Conachy  was  harmless  and  of  little  note,  but 


284  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Leeds  summed  up  in  himself  all  that  Bernard  disliked  in 
Irish  Nationalism.  He  was  vulgar,  stupid,  ignorant  and 
bigotted  and  always  talked  dogmatically  at  the  top  of  his 
voice.  He  talked  of  nothing  else  but  politics  and  always 
in  an  aggressive  manner.  He  maintained  that  the  ancient 
literature  of  Ireland,  which  he  had  not  read,  was  the  greatest 
literature  in  the  world;  that  Irish  music  was  the  greatest 
music  in  the  world ;  that  the  Round  Towers  were  the  most 
beautiful  pieces  of  architecture  in  the  world;  and  that  the 
Book  of  Kells  was  a  greater  work  of  art  than  all  the  pictures 
ever  painted.  Those  who  differed  from  him  in  this  opinion 
he  considered  traitors  to  Ireland,  in  which  category  he  also 
placed  everyone  who  had  ever  been  in  England,  everyone  who 
admired  English  literature,  everyone  who  spoke  English 
without  a  pronounced  Irish  accent,  everyone  who  parted  his 
hair  or  brushed  his  clothes,  and  everyone  who  did  not,  like 
himself,  talk  torrents  of  ungrammatical  Irish  on  every  un- 
suitable occasion. 

"  How  do  you  like  Ireland  ? "  he  asked  Willoughby. 
His  tone  was  intentionally  hostile. 

"  Immensely,"  said  Willoughby.  "  I  think  it's  a  delight- 
ful place." 

"  How  very  nice  and  patronizing  of  you !  "  sneered  Leeds. 

"  Oh,  I  mean  it  quite  sincerely,  I  assure  you,"  said  Wil- 
loughby, politely. 

"  Oh,  do  you?"  said  Leeds.  "  I  say,  do  you  know  that 
Ireland  was  Christian  and  civilized  when  your  country  was 
full  of  painted  savages?  " 

"  So  I  believe,"  said  Willoughby,  mildly.  "  And  I'm 
sorry  to  see  to  what  a  state  English  rule  has  brought  you." 

Conachy  insinuated  himself  into  the  conversation. 

"  You  were  asking  for  that,"  he  said  to  the  discomfited 
Leeds.  "  Don't  think  we're  all  like  him,  Mr.  Willoughby. 
Most  Irishmen  are  prepared  to  forgive  and  forget.  You 
seem  to  have  run  into  a  great  crowd  of  extremists,  but  don't 
forget  the  majority  are  moderate  men  like  me." 

Leeds  turned  all  his  wrath  on  Conachy,  and  the  two  began 


WAITING  285 

to  wrangle  about  extremes  and  moderation,  becoming  so 
heated  as  to  be  oblivious  to  the  rest  of  the  company. 
McGurk  seized  this  opportunity  to  whisper  to  O'Dwyer: 

"  Slip  off  from  these  eejits  and  come  for  a  walk  with  our 
crowd." 

O'Dwyer  did  so,  and  leaving  th.e  disputants  behind  the 
party  set  out  in  the  direction  of  Ardsmore.  The  road  led 
them  up  hill  through  a  typical  piece  of  Irish  mountain 
scenery.  The  whole  outlook  was  bleak  and  spacious,  the 
land  poor  and  unproductive,  but  dotted  all  over  with  ill- 
made  and  often  unhealthy-looking  cottages,  the  inhabitants 
of  which  maintained  a  meagre  existence  on  potatoes  grown 
in  patches  painfully  reclaimed  from  the  bog  or  hacked  out 
of  the  stony  hillsides.  Here  and  there  a  man  so  labouring 
shouted  greetings  to  them  in  Irish. 

"  Everything  is  delightful,"  said  Willoughby.  "  The 
friendly  hospitable  atmosphere!  And  how  delicious  is  that 
faint  smell  of  turf-smoke  one  gets  everywhere." 

"  How  did  you  pick  up  with  that  pair  of  asses?  "  O'Fla- 
herty  asked  O'Dwyer. 

"  Staying  in  the  same  digs." 

"  Couldn't  you  shift  over  to  the  hotel  with  us?  " 

"  Too  dear,"  said  O'Dwyer.  He  turned  to  Willoughby 
and  said,  "  That  Leeds  creature  is  what  you  friendly  English 
people  generally  imagine  an  Irish  extremist  to  be  like.  He's 
a  lunatic  of  course,  but  he's  not  a  bit  more  extreme  in  his 
desire  for  independence  than  I  am.  It  makes  me  furious 
when  English  people  won't  believe  I'm  in  earnest  about 
separation  because  I  don't  look  like  Leeds." 

"  We're  not  a  bit  more  at  fault  'than  you  are,"  said  Wil- 
loughby. "  Your  politics  are  based  entirely  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  English  people  are  a  lot  of  blood-thirsty 
tyrants." 

"  Nothing  of  the  sort,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Quite  the  con- 
trary. That  has  nothing  to  do  with  my  politics.  Even  if 
England  was  populated  entirely  by  decent  civilized  people 
like  you,  I  don't  want  to  be  governed  by  her,  or  even  under 


286  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

her  suzerainty:  I've  my  pride,  you  know.  I'm  quite  fit  to 
govern  myself,  foreign  affairs  and  all." 

"  Felim,"  said  Eugene,  "  you're  a  fanatic  —  an  unpractical 
extremist.  Nothing  can  be  done  without  compromise." 

"  Compromise !  "  snorted  O'Dwyer. 

"  Yes.  I'm  a  moderate  man,  and  I  believe  that  there 
must  be  compromise  and  give  and  take  on  both  sides." 

"  In  my  vocabulary,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  compromise  is 
another  word  for  surrender,  and  moderation  another  word 
for  cowardice." 

"  Well,  if  you  will  descend  to  abuse,  in  my  vocabulary 
extremist  is  another  word  for  lunatic." 

"  Here,  you  two,"  said  Bernard.  "  Chuck  it.  Don't  get  ex- 
cited. This  is  too  nice  a  day  for  politics.  Let's  rest  awhile." 

They  were  now  out  on  the  mountain-side  far  above  the 
village.  They  left  the  road  and  lay  down,  sprawling  lazily 
in  the  heather  on  the  turf  hot  with  the  sun.  The  irre- 
pressible O'Dwyer  at  once  returned  to  the  attack  on  Eugene. 

"  You  think  I'm  an  extremist  out  of  mere  obstinacy,"  he 
said.  "  You  think  I  like  the  battle  for  its  own  sake.  Well 
I  don't..  I  wish  it  was  over,  because  I'm  all  for  peace.  I'm 
not  a  revolutionary  like  Bernard,  who  would  never  be  con- 
tent with  things  as  they  are.  I  want  things  settled  quickly 
and  at  once  so  as  I  can  chuck  politics  and  get  at  my  writing. 
I  can't  fiddle  while  my  country  falls,  but  I  wish  she'd  stop 
falling  so  that  I  might  have  a  chance  to  do  some  fiddling." 

"  All  the  more  reason  for  moderation,"  said  Eugene. 
"  That's  the  way  to  peace  and  prosperity."  He  lay  back 
enjoying  the  sun.  "  How  beautiful  and  peaceful  nature  is, 
so  different  from  the  angry  passions  of  men.  Look!  " 

Sentimentally  he  gazed  up  at  a  skylark  winging  its  way 
aloft.  "  Hail  to  thee,  blithe  spirit,"  he  spouted. 

Suddenly  a  hawk  swooped  from  nowhere  on  its  prey. 

"What  price  peaceful  Nature  now?"  said  O'Flaherty. 

"  Nature's  an  extremist  all  right,"  said  Bernard.  "  Only 
civilization  saves  your  type  from  extinction,  Eugene." 

"  Well,  moderation  is  the  civilized  thing,"  said  Eugene. 


WAITING  287 

"  I'm  glad  you  admit  it."  He  spoke  triumphantly  as  having 
gained  a  point. 

"You  say  you  like  moderation  in  everything?"  asked 
McGurk. 

"  Yes." 

"  Well,  what  about  moderating  the  number  of  your  fin- 
gers? Lend  us  a  knife,  someone." 

"  Let  me  go!  "  cried  Eugene  as  McGurk  seized  his  wrist. 

"  Well,  if  you  aren't  the  awful  extremist !  Isn't  half  a 
dozen  fingers  enough  for  you?  Come  on,  Bernard.  Let's 
do  a  fmgerectomy  on  him." 

"  Chuck  it,  Hugo,"  said  O'Dwyer,  who  had  been  scrib- 
bling in  his  note-book  for  the  last  few  minutes.  "  I'm  writ- 
ing a  poem  on  Nature." 

"  Let's  hear  it,"  said  O'Flaherty. 

"  It  began  seriously,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  but  like  all  my 
poems  it  took  the  bit  between  its  teeth  and  bolted. 

"  I  wish  I  could  sing  of  the  beauties  of  spring 
When  the  lark's  on  the  wing  and  the  lambkins  are  bleating, 
When  every  hour  brings  forth  a  new  flower 
And  lessens  our  bills  for  lighting  and  heating. 

And  I  wish  I  could  write  of  the  wonders  of  night, 
The  magical  light  of  moon,  star,   and  planet, 
The  shimmer  and  beam  of  the  ocean,  the  gleam 
Of  the  glow-worm:  I  would  if  I  could  but  I  cannot. 

And  if  only  the  cloud  of  the  mystic  would  shroud 

And  inspire  me  to  ununderstandable  language, 

Ah,  then  you'd  concede  I'm  a  poet  indeed, 

But  it  doesn't. —  So  pass  me  a  hard-boiled-egg  sangwich." 

"  Bloody  good !  "  cried  McGurk. 

"  You've  sound  dope  on  poetry,"  said  O'Flaherty. 
"  There's  too  much  of  this  mystic  rubbish  going  round 
Ireland  at  present.  Now  that's  got  to  be  cut  right  out. 
We  haven't  time  for  it.  There  was  never  a  country  in  less 
need  of  minor  poets  than  this,  and  never  a  country  so  full 
of  them." 


288  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  There's  too  many  of  them  on  the  Provisional  Committee 
anyhow,"  said  McGurk. 

"  Quite  right,"  said  O'Flaherty.  "  We're  supposed  to  be 
a  military  movement  and  we're  ruled  by  people  like  Austin 
Mallow,  who  instead  of  reading  up  military  stuff,  scribbles 
symbolical  muck  about  swords  and  spears." 

"  You're  wrong  about  Mallow,"  said  Eugene.  "  I  don't 
agree  with  his  politics,  but  his  poetry  is  beautiful." 

"  Shows  how  well  you  understand  it,"  said  O'Flaherty, 
contemptuously.  "  Isn't  it  all  a  symbolic  appeal  to  Ireland 
to  rise  and  avenge  her  wrongs.  .  .  .  He's  got  spears  on  the 
brain.  .  .  .  Precious  lot  of  good  an  insurrection  would  do 
us  now." 

"  I  thought  you  were  all  red-hot  rebels,"  said  Willoughby. 

"  Do  I  look  very  red-hot  ?  "  demanded  O'Flaherty.  "  No, 
boys.  The  sooner  this  Provisional  Committee's  kicked  out, 
the  better.  I  counted  at  least  six  poets  on  it,  and  I'm  sure 
there's  as  many  more." 

"  You're  right,"  said  Bernard. 

"  It's  hard-chaws  we  want,"  said  McGurk. 

"  The  one  good  thing  about  the  movement  is  the  poets 
and  idealists  who  govern  it,"  said  Eugene.  "  I  look  to  them 
to  redeem  it  from  its  present  narrow  and  selfish  policy  and 
make  it  a  means  of  reconciliation  with  England  instead  of  a 
weapon  to  stab  her.  Your  policy  of  hate  simply  sickens  me." 

"  Eugene,  you're  a  soft-headed  old  donkey,"  said  Bernard. 
"  You'll  find  precious  little  peace  and  good-will  in  Mallow's 
poetry.  It's  hate  sublimated.  I  hate  England  as  much  as 
Mallow  does,  but  there's  some  sense  and  coolness  in  my 
hatred.  I  wouldn't  have  Ireland  cut  her  own  throat  to 
spite  England,  and  Mallow  would.  He'd  rush  us  into  rebel- 
lion tomorrow  just  to  have  the  satisfaction  of  killing  one 
Englishman  before  he  dies.  He  told  me  so  himself  a  few 
days  ago.  The  man's  a  lunatic,  and  I  wouldn't  trust  him 
with  a  popgun,  much  less  an  army.  .  .  .  And  I  tell  you  this. 
There  are  more  men  than  he  on  the  Committee  of  that  frame 
of  mind,  and  I'm  afraid  of  them." 


WAITING  289 

"  Well,"  said  Eugene,  "  that  only  shows  Redmond  was 
right  in  opposing  Volunteering.  You've  only  yourselves  to 
blame  for  joining  them.  I  wish  he'd  never  withdrawn  his 
opposition." 

"  He  had  to,"  said  McGurk. 

"  Well,  well,"  laughed  Willoughby.  "It's  true  after  all, 
Irishmen  can  never  agree.  What  on  earth  can  my  poor 
country  do  with  you  ?  " 

"  Leave  us  alone,"  said  O'Flaherty. 

"  I  wish  we  could,"  said  Willoughby. 

"  No  more  politics,"  cried  Bernard.  "  Read  us  another 
poem,  Felim." 

Felim  looked  through  his  note-book  and  said: 

"  Here's  a  triolet,  supposed  to  be  spoken  by  a  fair  and 
inconstant  maiden: — 

"Jack,  give  me  a  kiss: 

I'm  weary  of  Willy's. 
What  do  you  call  this? 
Jack,  give  me  a  kiss. 
That's  no  better  than  his  — 

Here  he  comes  bringing  lilies. 
Jack,  give  me  a  kiss: 

I'm  weary  of  Willy's." 

"  You're  a  beastly  cynic,  Felim,"  said  Eugene. 
"  Here  are  some  personalities,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

"A.  E.  (George  Russell) 
Made   the   Celt  bustle, 
And  turned  his  fairyland 
Into  a  dairyland." 

"  Grand !  "  said  McGurk.     "  Any  more  of  those?  " 

"  W.  B.  Yeates, 
Weary  of  bills  and  rates, 
Took  a  hive  for  the  honey  bee 
On  the  lake  Isle  of  Innisfree." 

The  sun  mounting  to  the  zenith  suggested  dinner.     As 


290  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

they  commenced  the  return  journey  Willoughby  said: 
"  You  fellows  aren't  a  bit  like  the  champions  of  an  op- 
pressed people.  Here  you've  spent  the  morning  arguing, 
abusing  each  other,  telling  stories  and  reciting  comic  verses, 
while  the  battle  for  your  liberties  is  being  fought  at  West- 
minster." 

"Alas!  me  poor  Cathleen!  "  sobbed  McGurk,  taking  out 
his  handkerchief.  "Is  that  the  sort  of  thing  ye  want?" 
he  asked. 

4 

For  a  fortnight  their  sojourn  at  Cloughaneely  was  unin- 
terrupted. It  was  a  perfect  place  for  a  holiday,  and  every- 
one did  just  as  he  pleased.  Bernard,  Eugene  and  O'Dwyer 
attended  lectures  every  morning  at  the  Irish  College ; 
O'Flaherty  studied  guerilla  strategy  in  the  mountains ;  Wil- 
loughby conscientiously  wandered  about  the  country-side 
studying  the  Irish  Question  and  getting  materials  for  articles 
and  letters  to  the  Radical  reviews;  McGurk  took  his  ease 
about  the  hotel.  In  the  afternoons  they  would  assemble  for 
a  collective  walk  or  a  bathe,  and  in  the  evenings  they  would 
gather  together  in  the  hotel  and  tell  each  other  endless  anec- 
dotes, compose  Limericks  about  their  friends,  or  listen  to 
extracts  from  O'Dwyer's  notebook.  Occasionally  they  went 
to  the  ceilidhes  at  the  college,  and  once  even  induced  Wil- 
loughby to  come.  He  made  no  show  at  the  dancing,  but 
came  home  in  a  very  sentimental  mood  induced  by  certain 
Irish  songs  of  plaintive  melody  and  banal  wording.  The 
chorus : 

"  Ni'l  si  Id,  ni'l  go  foil, 
Ni'l  si  an  oidhce,  nd  na  mhaidin." 

affected  him  almost  to  tears,  and  another  song,  "  Cruacha  na 
h-Eireann,"  sung,  though  he  knew  it  not,  to  a  commonplace 
English  music-hall  air,  made  him,  as  he  said,  "  appreciate 
what  a  wonderful  people  the  Irish  really  are." 

They  decided  to  impress  him  as  much  as  possible  and  took 
him  one  day  to  see  what  they  called  "  the  last  independent 


WAITING  291 

portion  of  Ireland."  This  meant  a  journey  by  sea  to  Tory 
Island,  which  has  paid  no  taxes  to  the  British  Empire  since 
the  day  when  a  gunboat  sent  to  collect  them  got  wrecked  on 
its  treacherous  shores.  But  Willoughby  was  still  more  im- 
pressed by  the  sight  of  the  corps  of  Volunteers  drilling  every 
evening  in  different  parts  of  the  country;  for  now  all  Ire- 
land was  organizing  and  two  hundred  thousand  men  were 
clamouring  for  arms. 

He  thought  the  Sunday  Mass  a  very  edifying  spectacle. 
The  church  was  a  small  one  and  it  was  crowded  to  the  doors, 
the  congregation  overflowing  even  into  the  churchyard  and 
the  road  outside.  Round  the  Communion-rails  the  old 
women  remained  prostrate,  foreheads  to  the  ground,  shawls 
drawn  over  their  heads,  all  through  the  service.  Bernard 
found  the  atmosphere  and  the  sermon  in  Irish  rather  trying, 
but  Willoughby  was  enthusiastic. 

"  I  never  knew  what  Catholicism  was  before,"  he  said. 
"  We  English  haven't  the  true  spirit  at  all." 

"Hmph!"  said  McGurk,  "these  fervent  Catholics 
would  cheat  you  in  a  business  deal  tomorrow." 

"  And  maybe  give  you  a  present  costing  double  what  they'd 
made  out  of  you  the  day  after,"  put  in  Eugene. 

"  And  abuse  you  behind  your  back  for  taking  it,"  added 
O 'Flaherty. 

"  We're  a  queer  people,"  Bernard  explained.  "  We've 
heaps  of  piety  and  no  ethics;  a  craze  for  generosity,  and  no 
notions  of  charity." 

"  I  find  you  all  very  charming  anyhow,"  said  Willoughby. 

"  Do  you  see  these  people  learning  to  think  Imperially?  " 
asked  Bernard,  and  Willoughby  had  to  confess  that  he  didn't. 

"  And  this,"  said  Bernard,  "  is  the  real  Ireland.  The 
foundations  on  which  the  Ireland  you  think  you  know  is 
built.  The  edifice  is  superficially  altered  by  climatic  and 
political  conditions,  but  it's  of  the  same  stuff  as  the  founda- 
tions. .  .  .  My  dear  Willoughby,  we're  a  different  people 
from  you  entirely.  We  haven't  an  idea  in  common.  We're 
more  different  from  you  than  the  French  from  the  Germans, 


292  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

or  the  Tibetans  from  yourselves.  ...  By  force  and  fraud 
you  may  succeed  in  governing  us,  but  we  can  never  be 
partners." 

"  I  love  to  hear  Bernard  spouting,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  He 
was  a  Unionist  a  few  months  ago. 

"  There  was  a  young  man  called  Lascelles 
Who  read  Marx,  Norman  Angel,  and  Wells  ..." 

"  Shut  up !  "  said  Bernard,  but  O'Dwyer  had  the  rapt  look 
that  told  of  further  composition  .  .  . 

Willoughby  had  expressed  himself  "  charmed "  with 
everything  he  had  seen  up  to  this,  but  he  was  less  pleased  by 
a  political  meeting  they  happened  to  witness  a  few  days  later 
at  Letterkenny.  They  had  gone  there  to  try  and  obtain 
some  tobacco  more  suited  to  his  taste  than  the  brands  obtain- 
able in  Gortahork.  The  moment  they  reached  the  station 
it  was  obvious  that  something  big  was  afoot.  The  streets 
were  full  of  hurrying  crowds  and  the  thump  and  rattle  of 
different  bands  could  be  heard  in  the  distance.  One  band 
swung  past  them  in  seedy  uniforms,  adorned  with  tarnished 
gold  braid;  a  tawdry  banner  borne  in  front;  a  terrible 
blare  bursting  from  its  battered  instruments.  Behind 
marched  a  company  of  half-disciplined  Volunteers  in  fours, 
armed  with  dummy  rifles  and  commanded  by  an  obvious  ex- 
Sergeant  Major  of  the  British  Army.  Our  friends  —  only 
Bernard,  Willoughby  and  O'Flaherty  had  come  to  Letter- 
kenny —  followed  in  their  wake  to  the  focus  on  which  all 
were  concentrating  —  the  market-place,  one  vast  discordance 
of  sights,  sounds,  and  smells.  Men,  organized  and  un- 
organized, hurried  here  and  there.  Banners  of  motley  kinds 
flaunted  the  sky.  Pipes,  bugles,  fifes,  drums  rent  the  air. 
Shouts  and  bells  added  to  the  confusion.  The  atmosphere 
was  stifling;  it  barely  stirred  the  great  green  flag  over  the 
platform  in  the  centre  of  the  square. 

Suddenly,  a  big,  burly,  red-faced  man  mounted  the  plat- 
form, and  as  he  raised  his  hand,  silence  gradually  fell. 


WAITING  293 

"  Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  he  said,  "  we  have  assembled 
here  today,  we  men  and  women  of  the  land  of  the  O'Don- 
nells  "  (cheers)  "  to  pledge  once  more  our  renewed  faith 
and  loyalty  "  (cheers)  "  to  the  men  who  have  fought  for  us 
so  long  and  so  faithfully  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  have  brought  the  Home  Rule  ship  to  the  mouth 
of  the  harbour  "  (cheers) — "  to  Mr.  John  Redmond  and 
the  Irish  Parliamentary  Party  "  (loud  and  prolonged  cheer- 
ing). "And,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  we  would  associate 
with  them  in  our  gratitude  those  young  men "  (cheers) 
"  who,  inspired  by  them,  called  the  people  of  Ireland  to 
arm  themselves,  lest  the  rights  they  had  won  by  constitu- 
tional means  should  be  filched  from  them  by  the  armed 
bullying  of  the  Orangemen  "  (groans).  "  But " 

It  was  a  long-drawn-out  and  ominous  "  But."  It  trans- 
pired that  the  young  men  who  had  founded  the  Volunteer 
movement  were  not  the  right  people  to  carry  it  on.  They 
were  rash,  unskilled  in  politics.  Their  leaders  must  be 
"  tried  and  trusted  men,"  for  now  "  by  a  single  false  step  the 
cup  might  be  dashed  from  the  Nation's  lips  just  as  it  was 
about  to  bear  fruit."  In  short,  the  speaker  moved  that  this 
meeting  requested  Mr.  John  Redmond  and  the  Irish  Party 
to  take  over  the  leadership  of  the  Volunteers.  (Tremendous 
cheering  as  the  speaker  made  place  for  another.) 

"  Shows  the  way  the  wind's  blowing,"  remarked  Bernard 
to  Hektor.  "\Vonder  what's  happening  in  Dublin?" 

"  Goodness  knows,"  said  Hektor,  gloomily.  They  had 
heard  nothing  from  their  friends  in  town  since  their  arrival 
in  Cloughaneely,  and  though  they  had  gathered  from  the 
papers  that  there  was  trouble  afoot  between  the  Volunteer 
Committee  and  the  Party,  they  could  only  guess  vaguely  at 
its  extent. 

They  left  the  market-place  and  searched  the  tobacconists 
of  Letterkenny,  but  to  Willoughby's  dismay  no  Perique 
was  to  be  found,  and  he  was  forced  to  wire  to  Dublin 
for  it. 

"  Why  the  devil  couldn't  the  Party  be  content  with  co- 


294  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

operation  ? "  demanded  Hektor,  savagely,  in  the  train. 
"  Why  must  they  dominate  everything?  " 

Their  news  brought  gloom  to  the  jolly  crowd  gathered 
that  evening  at  the  hotel.  Eugene  deprecated;  O'Dwyer 
raved;  McGurk  cursed  ferociously;  Willoughby  looked  on, 
politely  puzzled. 

And  the  next  evening  Stephen  Ward  arrived  at  Gortahork. 


5 

He  was  pale  and  haggard,  and  his  weary  eyes  told  of  sleep- 
less nights.  He  said  little  and  went  to  bed  almost  immedi- 
ately on  his  arrival.  By  the  time  he  came  down  to  breakfast 
the  morning  paper  had  told  them  that  the  Provisional  Com- 
mittee had  yielded  to  Mr.  Redmond's  pressure  and  allowed 
him  to  nominate  twenty-five  members  to  their  body. 

"  I  know  you'll  think  it  weak  of  us,"  he  said  as  he  took 
his  place  late  at  the  breakfast  table.  "  But  it  was  inevit- 
able. We  couldn't  afford  to  split  the  country  on  the  issue." 

"  Suppose  not,"  was  the  unwilling  agreeement. 

"  Such  work  as  we've  had  this  last  week,"  said  Stephen. 
"  All-night  sittings,  interviews,  letters,  negotiations  —  I 
need  a  holiday  badly." 

He  attacked  his  breakfast  almost  greedily. 

The  following  morning  when  the  list  of  Redmond's 
nominees  was  read  out  there  was  a  storm  of  indignation. 

"Holy  murdher!"  cried  McGurk.  "Half  the  crooks 
and  jobbers  in  the  U.I.L. !  Is  that  what  he  calls  his  repre- 
sentative men  ?  The  bloody  old  cod !  " 

"  Half  of  them  are  Dublin  men,  too,"  observed  Stephen. 
"  And  one  of  the  reasons  he  gave  for  wanting  to  enlarge  the 
committee  was  that  Dublin  was  too  well  represented." 

"  A  good  indication  of  the  Party's  honesty,"  said  Bernard 
to  Eugene. 

"  The  question  is,"  said  O'Flaherty,  "  have  they  come  in 
to  make  the  movement  subservient  to  the  Party,  or  to  wreck 
it?" 


WAITING  295 

"  To  wreck  it,  of  course,"  said  McGurk.  "  That's  what 
they've  been  trying  to  do  all  along." 

"And  what's  to  be  done  now?"  asked  Bernard,  despair- 
ingly. 

"  We  must  hold  together  in  spite  of  them,"  said  Stephen. 

He  took  Bernard  and  Hektor  off  for  a  walk  away  from  the 
others  that  afternoon. 

"  Don't  suppose  I  came  here  for  a  holiday  entirely,"  he 
said.  "  There's  work  to  be  done  still.  While  civil  war 
rages  on  the  committee  the  men  have  got  to  be  armed,  and 
our  crowd  will  have  to  do  it.  There's  a  small  committee 
just  formed,  we're  raising  money,  and  we're  just  thinking 
out  the  best  way  of  bringing  the  guns  into  the  country  when 
we've  got  them.  I  came  up  here  partly  to  see  you  fellows 
and  partly  to  find  out  if  there's  a  good  landing-place  on  this 
coast." 

"This  looks  like  business!"  said  Bernard,  his  drooping 
spirits  quickly  reviving. 

"  What  would  be  the  good  of  landing  guns  in  a  place  like 
this  at  the  back  of  god-speed  ?  "  asked  Hektor. 

"  Just  what  I  said  myself,"  said  Stephen,  "  but  our  people 
have  got  obsessed  with  a  notion  that  things  must  be  done  in 
a  hole-and-corner  way.  I'd  like  them  to  take  a  leaf  out  of 
Carson's  book  and  do  the  thing  with  a  splash." 

"  That's  the  right  dope,"  said  Hektor.  "  Land  the  guns 
at  Howth  or  Kingstown  in  full  daylight;  then  you're  near 
your  base ;  everything  is  much  easier ;  you  get  a  good  political 
effect ;  and  the  risk  of  being  interfered  with  isn't  a  bit  greater 
—  not  worth  reckoning,  anyhow.  .  .  .  Take  your  holiday, 
man,  and  waste  no  time  speculating  over  Donegal." 

"  I  think  I'll  take  your  advice,"  said  Stephen.  "  And 
now  there's  one  thing  more  I  want  to  ask  you.  The  guns 
will  have  to  be  bought  on  the  continent,  so  we'll  need  men 
to  go  for  them  who  have  leisure,  who  know  their  way  about, 
and  who  aren't  too  well  known  to  the  authorities.  That 
description  seems  to  point  to  you  two,  I  think.  Will  you 
be  ready  when  wanted  ?" 


296  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Rather,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Sure  thing,"  said  Hektor. 

Stephen  spent  a  week  at  Gortahork  and  then  returned  to 
town.  Next  day  Willoughby,  who  was  to  be  married  in 
July,  also  took  his  departure.  Bernard  and  Eugene  saw 
him  as  far  as  Letterkenny  whence  he  was  to  travel  by  Belfast 
and  Fleetwood  homeward.  His  last  words  to  Bernard  were 
a  promise  to  fight  Ireland's  cause  in  England  to  the  end. 

As  soon  as  they  reached  Gortahork  they  encountered 
Hektor  who  handed  Bernard  an  opened  telegram,  which 


Come  to  town  at  once. 

Stephen. 

6 

"  You  two  will  have  a  colleague  in  this  business,"  said 
Stephen,  as  he,  Bernard  and  Hektor  set  out  from  the  Neptune 
next  day.  "  His  name  is  Umpleby, —  Cyril  Umpleby,  and 
unfortunately  he's  rather  an  ass.  But  he  has  the  tremen- 
dous advantage  of  being  a  good  French  speaker  and  he  knows 
his  way  about  Antwerp.  He's  not  very  discreet,  he's  a  fair 
supply  of  brain,  he's  a  sublime  egoist  and  a  snob  of  the  first 
water.  You'll  find  him  amusing  on  the  whole,  but  you'll 
have  to  keep  him  in  order.  I  may  add  that  he's  quite 
insuppressible." 

"  Some  handful !  "  said  Hektor. 

"  In  addition  to  him  you're  now  going  to  meet  two  of  the 
finest  men  in  the  world.  I  say  that  without  any  hesitation. 
The  first  is  George  Calverley.  He's  an  Englishman,  and 
one  of  the  best  friends  Ireland  ever  had.  He's  a  sportsman 
of  the  best  type,  and  probable  the  best  yachtsman  in  England. 
He's  offered  to  run  the  guns  for  us  in  his  yacht  the  Cor- 
morant, one  of  the  speediest  boats  of  her  size,  I  believe, — 
and,  by  the  way,  that  reminds  me.  Umpleby  is  such  a 
blitherer  that  we're  telling  him  nothing  he  needn't  know. 


WAITING  297 

So  he  thinks  the  guns  are  going  to  be  run  home  in  a  fleet  of 
fishing  smacks,  and  if  that  rumour  gets  around  it'll  be  all  to 
the  good.  Unfortunately  the  Cormorant  won't  hold  all  the 
guns  we  intend  to  buy,  so  we've  had  to  ask  another  yachtsman 
to  take  half  of  them, —  an  Irishman  this  time,  a  real  jewel 
of  a  man  with  an  English  accent  that  would  knock  you  down. 
Have  you  ever  heard  of  Angus  O'Connor?  I  suppose  not. 
He  lives  most  of  his  time  in  London  and  he's  well  known 
there  I  believe.  Calverley's  going  to  run  his  cargo  into 
Howth  and  O'Connor's  taking  his  to  Kilcool,  to  prevent 
accidents.  O'Connor  of  course  isn't  the  other  finest  man 
in  the  world  I  was  telling  you  about.  .  .  .  He's  .  .  .  but 
you  can  judge  for  yourselves,  for  here  we  are  at  our  destina- 
tion." 

They  turned  into  a  hotel  in  Sackville  Street  and,  ascend- 
ing to  the  second  floor,  entered  a  small  private  sitting-room. 
There  were  several  men  in  the  room,  but  one  was  of  such 
distinguished  appearance  that  he  caught  Bernard's  undivided 
attention  at  once.  He  was  standing  with  his  back  to  the 
fire,  leaning  against  the  mantelpiece,  his  arms  folded  across 
his  chest.  He  was  very  tall,  well  over  six  feet,  and  of  mag- 
nificent proportions.  His  face  was  one  of  singular  beauty 
and  serenity,  and  his  eyes  were  dark  and  kindly.  The 
strength  and  character  of  his  well-modelled  jaw  were  soft- 
ened but  not  hidden  by  his  curling  black  beard.  In  short, 
this  was  a  figure  that  in  any  assembly  would  be  the  first  to 
attract  the  attention  of  an  onlooker.  When  our  friends  en- 
tered he  was  talking  with  another  man,  Sullivan  of  the 
Provisional  Committee;  but  he  now  looked  up  with  an  eager 
smile  of  welcome. 

"  This  is  my  friend  Mr.  Lascelles,"  said  Stephen.  "  Mr. 
Lascelles, —  Sir  Roger  Casement." 

"  I've  heard  great  things  about  you,"  said  Sir  Roger,  with 
a  courtly  smile.  His  accent  was  that  of  the  educated  and 
travelled  Irishman:  that  is  to  say  it  was  colourless  save  for 
the  faintest  indications  of  that  native  tint  that  Irishmen 
give  to  certain  vowels  and  consonants. 


298  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Any  relation  to  Sir  Eugene  Lascelles?  "  asked  Sir  Roger. 

"  Son,"  said  Bernard. 

"  I  knew  him  slightly  in  days  gone  by.  He's  not  one  of 
us,  I'm  afraid." 

Bernard  laughed.  He  was  pleasantly  flattered  by  the 
"  us  "  spoken  by  this  magnificent  man,  the  world-renowned 
exposer  of  the  Congo  and  Putomayo  atrocities.  Sir  Roger 
turned  now  to  greet  Hektor,  and  Bernard  had  an  opportunity 
of  observing  the  other  people  present.  They  were  three: 
two  stood  conversing  in  a  far  corner  of  the  room  and  the 
third  was  bent  over  a  table  at  the  window  with  his  back  to 
the  door,  so  intent  on  the  study  of  a  map  as  not  to  have  paid 
any  attention  to  the  new  arrivals.  Of  the  other  two,  one 
was  a  tall,  dandified  man  with  well-oiled  hair  and  a  neat 
moustache:  and  the  other  he  recognized  at  once  as  Cyril 
Umpleby.  He  was  talking  rapidly  to  his  companion  and 
did  not  cease  at  the  entry  of  Stephen  and  his  friends.  How- 
ever, Sir  Roger  now  came  forward  and  interrupted  him  by 
quickly  going  through  the  necessary  introductions.  Umple- 
by's  companion  turned  out  to  be  Angus  O'Connor.  The 
man  with  the  map  who  now  relinquished  his  labours  and 
came  up  to  be  introduced  was  George  Calverley,  a  sturdy, 
clean-cut  sailorly  man  of  few  words  and  brisk  action. 

"Were  you  followed?"  Umpleby  anxiously  inquired  of 
Stephen. 

"Who  by?" 

"  G  men,  of  course." 

"  I  don't  suppose  so." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  you  didn't  make  sure?  " 

Stephen  rudely  turned  his  back  on  his  questioner,  as  if 
to  dismiss  his  anxiety  as  trivial,  and  remarked  to  Sullivan : 

"  Umpleby  has  G  men  on  the  brain." 

"  WTe  can't  be  too  careful,"  said  Umpleby. 

"  Just  what  we  can  be,"  said  Hektor,  much  to  the  general 
amusement. 

"  Let's  get  to  business  anyway,"  said  Sullivan.  "  You 
three  are  going  to  buy  the  guns  for  us,  I  take  it.  Very 


WAITING  299 

well,  then.  In  the  first  place  here's  the  money,  divided  into 
three  packets  for  safety.  Take  one  each." 

He  handed  the  three  young  men  a  packet  each  in  his  turn 
and  went  on : 

"  We've  decided  that  Antwerp  is  the  most  suitable  place 
for  all  our  needs  and  your  orders  are  simply  to  go  there  at 
once  and  get  as  many  rifles  as  the  money  can  buy,  with  a 
good  supply  of  ammunition.  You  must  then  ship  them  down 
the  river  and  out  to  sea  to  a  spot  marked  on  this  chart, — 
I'll  entrust  it  to  you,  O'Flaherty." 

He  produced  another  packet  and  handed  it  over. 

"  You  must  be  at  that  spot  punctually  at  midday  on  the 
fourteenth  of  July  next,  when  you'll  meet  the  —  er  —  fleet 
of  trawlers  commanded  by  Calverley  and  O'Connor,  who 
will  take  over  all  responsibility  from  then.  This  is  the 
twenty-seventh  of  June,  which  gives  you  exactly  sixteen  and 
a  half  days  for  the  job.  Is  everything  quite  clear?  " 

Hektor  repeated  these  instructions  correctly,  and  the  three 
gun-runners  decided  to  start  by  next  morning's  mail-boat. 
Umpleby  immediately  prepared  to  leave. 

"  I've  a  lot  of  arrangements  to  make,"  he  said,  "  and  then 
I've  my  packing  to  do.  We  can  plan  out  the  rest  of  our 
journey  on  board:  I  have  a  Bradshaw.  Au  revoir."  And 
he  went  out. 

"  Thank  heaven  for  his  packing,"  said  Calverley.  He 
turned  to  Bernard.  "You're  Lascelles,  aren't  you?"  he 
said.  Bernard  nodded.  "  I  hear  you  can  sail  a  boat?  " 

"  Pretty  well,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Well,  I'll  have  to  pay  off  several  of  my  hands  for  this 
trip  as  they  aren't  all  trustworthy.  Now  I  don't  mind 
sailing  the  Cormorant  out  shorthanded,  but  I  wouldn't  care 
to  risk  it  coming  home  with  the  cargo.  So  if  you're  willing 
I'll  take  you  on." 

Bernard  was  perfectly  willing.  It  appeared  that  to  make 
quite  sure  of  punctuality  the  yacht  was  to  remain  longer  at 
sea  than  was  necessary,  the  date  for  delivering  the  arms  at 
Howth  being  the  twenty-sixth  of  July  at  12:45  P.  M.,  when 


300  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

the  harbour  would  be  occupied  by  the  Dublin  Volunteers. 

"  I'll  see  you  again  off  Antwerp  on  the  fourteenth  of 
July,"  said  Bernard,  taking  leave  of  Calverley.  "  And  you 
on  the  twenty-sixth  at  Howth,"  he  said  to  Stephen.  "  Good- 
bye, Sir  Roger." 

"  Good-bye,"  said  Casement,  "  and  good  luck." 

Bernard  never  saw  him  again. 

He  and  Hektor  descended  to  the  street. 

"  I  like  these  short  business-like  interviews,"  said  Hektor. 
"  They're  rare  in  Ireland.  .  .  .  Well,  we'll  meet  tomorrow." 

They  parted  at  that  and  Bernard  turned  towards  home. 
Arrived  there  he  summoned  before  him  the  excellent  serv- 
itor Swathythe,  mentioned  in  his  letter  to  Willoughby. 
Swathythe  was  a  treasure.  He  did  everything  for  Bernard 
from  tending  his  clothes  and  polishing  his  door  plate  to  clean- 
ing his  motor.  He  was  an  impassive  dark-haired  man  who 
might  have  been  any  age  from  twenty  to  forty  and  was 
actually  twenty-six. 

"  Swathythe,"  said  Bernard,  "  I'm  going  away  again  for  a 
month." 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  Swathythe. 

"  Tomorrow  morning,  Swathythe." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  You  show  no  surprise,  Swathythe  ?  " 

"  I  am  not  surprised,  sir.     No  business  to  be,  sir." 

"  I'll  be  back  to  dinner  at  seven  sharp  on  the  twenty-sixth 
of  July,  Swathythe." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  I'll  have  oysters,  Swathythe." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  And  mutton  broth,  Swathythe." 

"Yes,  sir." 

"  And  a  sweetbread.     And  roast  duck  and  green  peas." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  And  a  chocolate  soufflee,  Swathythe." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  At  seven  o'clock  on  the  twenty-sixth  prqx.,  Swathythe," 


WAITING  301 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  And  now  you  might  go  and  pack  my  bag,  Swathythe." 

7 

All  the  world  was  at  peace  when  Bernard  and  his  friends 
started  on  their  mission.  The  most  disturbed  spot  in  all 
Europe  was  Ireland,  but  even  there  the  trouble  did  not 
seriously  affect  ordinary  life.  There  was  no  need  to  notice 
it  at  all  if  one  did  not  read  the  newspapers,  and  there  was  a 
general  feeling  that  things  would  soon  settle  down  to  their 
normal  state.  Bloodshed  and  starvation  seemed  very  impos- 
sible occurrences  in  those  days:  the  thought  of  them  never 
crossed  the  minds  of  ordinary  men.  The  world  sprawled 
in  blissful  ignorance  under  the  glorious  sun  of  June. 

"  Thank  God  for  a  quiet  life,"  murmured  O'Dwyer  to 
McGurk,  as  they  basked  on  the  beach  of  Magheruarty. 
"  I  wonder  what  fetched  those  fellows  off  in  such  a  hurry." 

At  that  very  moment  Gavrilo  Prinzip  in  the  streets  of 
Serajevo  fired  the  first  shot  in  the  great  European  War. 
The  news  was  known  over  the  whole  world  the  following 
morning,  but  nobody  anticipated  the  drama  to  which  it  was 
a  prelude,  or  saw  anything  beyond  the  actual  tragedy. 

"The  poor,  poor  Archduke!  What  a  blow  to  the  old 
Emperor!  "  exclaimed  Mrs.  Harvey,  who  always  felt  the 
misfortunes  of  royalty  acutely  and  personally  .  .  . 

"  Those  savage  Balkan  states!  "  said  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke. 
"  They  ought  to  be  exterminated.  I  hope  Austria  will  wipe 
the  Servians  off  the  face  of  the  earth  .  .  ." 

"  What  a  lesson  to  our  government,"  said  Sir  Eugene 
Lascelles.  "  They've  no  excuse  for  not  suppressing  these 
Volunteers  now  .  .  ." 

"Dear  me!"  said  Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington.  "Fancy 
any  one  taking  another  man's  life  and  risking  his  own  for 
a  wretched  little  country  like  Servia!  " 

And  in  a  Hotel  in  Antwerp  Hektor  O'Flaherty  said  to 
Bernard : 

"  We  aren't  arming  a  bit  too  soon.     This  means  war," 


CHAPTER  XII 

GUNS 


CYRIL  UMPLEBY  hurriedly  drew  Bernard  and  Hek- 
tor  into  his  cabin  and  shut  the  door. 

"The  less  we're  seen  together,"  he  said,  "the  better; 
for  fear  of  spies,  you  know.  I'm  afraid  I've  been  noticed 
already.  .  .  .  However,  it  can't  be  helped.  .  .  .  We'll  just 
settle  on  our  plans  and  then  separate  until  we  reach  Euston. 
I  consulted  my  Bradshaw  last  night  and  I  find  that  if  we 
leave  London  at  seven  tomorrow  we  can  get  an  afternoon 
boat  from  Harwich  that  will  land  us  at  Antwerp  in  the  small 
hours  of  Thursday.  What  do  you  say  to  that?  " 

Bernard  and  Hektor  had  no  objection  to  this  course,  so 
they  left  Umpleby  without  any  reluctance,  and  regardless 
of  his  warnings  paced  the  deck  together.  After  a  calm  cross- 
ing they  reached  Holyhead  where  they  saw  Umpleby,  osten- 
tatiously ignoring  them,  plunge  into  the  first-class  dining 
saloon.  The  friends  were  glad  to  be  without  him,  and  the 
journey  passed  uneventfully  save  for  one  incident.  At 
Crewe  a  porter  brought  Hektor  a  note  which  ran  as  follows : 

Spi  on  ouf  cfdc.     tatr.  in  l>Uc      Ceep  fepA^co. 

c.r, 

"  Spy  on  our  track.  Lady  in  black.  Keep  separate," 
read  Bernard.  "What  an  ass  of  a  cipher.  He  might  as 
well  have  written  it  in  English.  Need  we  bother,  I  won- 
der? " 

"  Umpleby  has  spies  on  the  brain,"  said  Hektor.  "  Unless 
he's  been  blithering  himself  no  one  could  guess  we're  up  to 
anything." 

302 


GUNS  303 

They  took  no  further  notice  of  the  communication,  and 
on  arriving  at  the  Euston  Hotel  waited  so  as  to  overhear 
the  number  of  Umpleby's  bedroom  and  then  followed  him 
thither. 

"  You  got  my  note  ?  "  asked  Umpleby  in  great  excitement. 
"  She  got  into  the  train  at  Chester, —  a  tall,  slender  woman 
in  black,  a  typical  adventuress.  No  doubt  of  it  at  all." 

"  That's  too  true  to  type  altogether,"  said  Bernard.  "  I'd 
be  much  more  inclined  to  suspect  an  innocent  looking  pussy- 
like  miss,  or  a  friendly  commercial  traveller.  Things  aren't 
done  in  this  dramatic  way." 

"  See  if  she  doesn't  follow  us  here,"  said  Umpleby. 

"  She  might  come  here  without  being  after  us." 

"  I  know,  but  we  must  make  certain.  If  she's  downstairs 
now,  I'll  go  and  order  a  reserved  carriage  for  somewhere  or 
other  to  put  her  off  the  track.  Come  down  now,  but  don't 
keep  together." 

Sure  enough  a  tall,  slender  woman  in  black  was  standing 
near  the  bureau  in  the  hall.  Umpleby  glanced  triumphantly 
at  Bernard  as  much  as  to  say:  "  I  told  you  so,"  and  going 
to  the  telephone  asked  in  a  loud  voice  (unnecessarily  loud, 
thought  Hektor  the  strategist)  for  a  reserved  carriage  on  the 
2:15  train  for  Southampton  next  day.  Then  they  returned 
severally  to  Umpleby's  room. 

"Now,  wasn't  I  right?"  demanded  Umpleby.  "We 
must  separate  at  once.  I'll  start  right  out  now  for  the 
Cecil.  Lascelles,  you'd  better  make  for  the  Metropole. 
You  can  stay  here,  O'Flaherty,  unless  you've  a  preference. 
We'll  meet  again  at  seven  o'clock  tomorrow  at  Liverpool 
Street.  Au  revoir." 

When  he  was  gone  Bernard  said  to  Hektor: 

"  Leave  him  to  the  flesh-pots  of  the  Cecil.  Let's  come 
down  to  dinner." 

The  lady  in  black  was  already  at  the  soup  when  Bernard 
and  Hektor  entered  the  dining-room.  She  paid  not  the 
smallest  attention  to  their  presence  and  left  the  room  while 
they  were  still  lingering  over  coffee. 


304  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  That's  no  spy,"  said  Bernard  emphatically. 

"  I  don't  know  so  much,"  said  Hektor.  "  She's  a  peach 
anyhow." 

They  strolled  out  into  the  busy  streets  and,  after  consult- 
ing an  evening  paper,  made  for  an  adjacent  music  hall. 

Here,  during  an  interval,  they  adjourned  for  a  moment 
to  the  bar,  where,  in  "  immaculate  evening  dress,"  the  first 
person  they  saw  was  Bernard's  old  school-fellow  Molloy. 
Bernard  introduced  him  to  Hektor  after  a  whispered  in- 
junction to  "  mark  him  well." 

"Dull  show,  isn't  it?"  said  Molloy.  "I  came  here  to 
kill  time.  Where  are  you  fellows  staying?  I'm  at  the 
Carlton." 

"  Euston,"  said  Bernard.  "  But  we're  only  passing 
through.  Surprised  to  see  you  .  .  .  but  one  meets  Dublin 
people  everywhere." 

"  One  does,"  said  Molloy.  "  Considering  what  a  little 
bit  of  a  place  it  is  its  population  scatters  pretty  well.  Wher- 
ever I  go  I  knock  up  against  Dubliners.  Lord  Donegal's 
staying  at  the  Carlton,  and  I  met  Sir  Perry  Tifflytis  at  the 
Ritz  the  other  night.  .  .  .  How  are  things  with  you?  Pa- 
tients rolling  in  ?  " 

"  Slowly.     However  ...  we  won't  keep  you.     So  long." 

Bernard  and  Hektor  returned  to  the  auditorium. 

"  It's  true  what  he  says,"  observed  Hektor.  "  You  meet 
Dublin  people  wherever  you  go,  from  Oklahoma  to  St. 
Petersburg.  .  .  .  Why  did  you  tell  me  to  mark  him  ?  " 

"  Because  he's  the  greatest  snob  I  ever  met,  and  his  snob- 
bery is  of  the  very  crudest  kind.  It's  so  crude  that  if  you 
put  it  in  a  book  your  character-drawing  would  be  called 
clumsy  and  obvious.  .  .  .  Did  you  notice  how  prosperous 
he  looks?  That  man  has  no  brains,  yet  everything  he 
touches  turns  to  gold.  He's  been  two  years  in  practice  as 
a  solicitor,  and  already  he's  rich.  Of  course  he  had  money 
to  start  with,  but  he  made  heaps  defending  unfortunate 
rioters  in  the  great  strike,  and  he  knows  how  to  toady  the 
wealthy.  ...  I  tell  you  what,  Hektor,  when  we  two  stand 


GUNS  305 

on  the  gallows,  as  well  we  may,  he'll  be  there  to  make  money 
out  of  us." 

"  No  gallows  for  us,  old  son,"  said  Hektor.  "  We're 
going  to  win  this  time." 

2 

Umpleby  was  already  on  board  the  train  and  buried  in 
his  newspaper  when  Bernard  and  Hektor  arrived  at  Liver- 
pool Street,  so  they  did  the  journey  to  Harwich  without  him. 

"  No  sign  of  the  lady  in  black,"  said  Bernard,  as  he 
watched  the  crowds  on  the  platform  before  departure.  "  We 
must  have  given  her  the  slip,  or  else  she  was  never  after  us." 

On  the  arrival  platform  at  Harwich  Umpleby,  jostling 
against  them,  said  between  his  teeth: 

"  Different  hotels.     I'm  for  the  Royal." 

The  railway  hotel  was  good  enough  for  the  other  two, 
and  there  they  took  a  hearty  lunch,  interrupted  by  occasional 
glances  round  for  the  lady  in  black. 

"  We've  shook  her  off  for  sure,"  said  Hektor.  "  Well, 
if  she's  a  fair  sample  of  the  English  secret  service,  God  help 
them." 

The  boat  was  to  start  at  half-past  two,  but  Bernard  and 
Hektor  went  on  board  half  an  hour  beforehand  to  secure 
berths.  That  done  they  took  seats  on  deck  and  awaited 
Umpleby 's  arrival. 

"Who'll  arrive  first?"  said  Bernard.  "Umpleby  or 
the  lady  in  black?" 

"  Ten  to  one  on  Umpleby,"  replied  Hektor.  "  Black 
Lady's  scratched." 

"  I'll  chance  it,"  said  Bernard.     "  Take  you  in  sovereigns." 

"  It's  taking  your  money,"  said  Hektor. 

"  Just  you  wait,"  said  Bernard. 

Scattered  passengers  kept  coming  on  board  during  the 
next  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  they  were  beginning  to  feel 
anxious  lest  Umpleby  should  be  late,  when  suddenly  Bernard 
cried : 

"  You  owe  me  a  tenner,  Hektor.     Here's  the  lady!  " 


306  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"Well,  I'm  jiggered!  "  said  Hektor. 

Down  the  gangway  came  the  tall,  slim  figure  of  the  lady 
in  black.  She  passed  them  without  a  sign  of  recognition 
and  went  down  the  companion  way. 

"  Well,"  said  O'Flaherty,  "  if  she  isn't  after  us,  coinci- 
dence must  have  a  jolly  long  reach.  What'll  Umpleby  say?  " 

"  That  reminds  me,"  said  Bernard.  "  Where  is  Umpleby? 
The  boat  starts  in  four  minutes." 

They  waited  anxiously.  Non-passengers  were  being 
cleared  off  the  decks,  steam  was  getting  up,  already  one  of 
the  gangways  had  been  pulled  in,  and  still  there  was  no  sign 
of  Umpleby. 

"  Twenty-eight  minutes  past,"  said  Bernard,  glancing  at 
his  watch. 

Another  minute  sped  by  and  preparations  were  being  made 
to  pull  up  the  last  gangway,  when  in  an  instant  Umpleby 
leaped  into  view  and  literally  hurled  himself  on  deck. 

"  You've  cut  it  rather  fine,"  said  Hektor. 

"  Sensible  thing  to  do,"  said  Umpleby,  panting  for  breath. 
"  Suppose  you  two  .  .  .  here  this  .  .  .  hour  or  two.  .  .  . 
Lay  low  till  last  minute.  .  .  .  That's  the  way  to  dodge 
spies." 

"  No  luck  this  time  then,"  said  Hektor.  "  The  lady  in 
black  came  on  board  five  minutes  ago." 

"  My  God !  "  said  Umpleby.  "  And  you  two  refused  to 
believe  me." 

"  Never  mind,  old  chap,"  said  Bernard.  "  The  question 
is,  What's  to  be  done  now?  We  ought  to  be  able  to  give 
her  the  slip  in  Antwerp." 

"  No  use,"  said  Hektor.  "  If  she  gets  even  an  inkling 
what  we're  up  to  there  she'll  wire  back,  and  there'll  be 
cruisers  patrolling  the  straits  for  a  month  to  come.  She's  got 
to  be  convinced  that  we're  up  to  nothing." 

"  W^e'd  better  chuck  her  overboard  when  it's  dark,"  said 
Umpleby,  trying  to  make  his  funny  little  face  look  stern  and 
relentless. 

"  No  good,"  said  Hektor.     "  You  bet  they  know  exactly 


GUNS  307 

where  she  is  and  if  she  disappeared  it  would  be  just  as  good 
as  a  telegram  declaring  us  dangerous." 

The  boat  was  now  standing  out  to  sea,  and  the  lady  in 
black  emerging  on  deck  went  to  the  railings  and  gazed  back 
sentimentally  at  the  land.  She  was  just  within  earshot  of 
the  three  Irishmen. 

"  Isn't  she  like  Milady  in  the  Three  Musketeers?  "  whis- 
pered Bernard  to  Hektor. 

"  A  little  too  like  for  my  taste,"  returned  Hektor. 

"What  on  earth  are  we  to  do?"  whispered  Umpleby. 
"  Really  the  situation's  desperate." 

"  I've  an  idea,"  said  Hektor.  "  Just  leave  me  a  moment 
to  do  a  good  think  on  it." 

They  relapsed  into  silence  and  the  little  steamer  throbbed 
its  way  over  the  water.  .  .  .  After  about  ten  minutes  of 
cogitation  Hektor  spoke: 

"  We  may  take  it  that  if  we  give  Milady  the  faintest 
cause  for  suspicion,  in  fact  if  we  don't  eradicate  the  suspi- 
cions we've  roused  already,  Antwerp  will  be  watched  by 
British  cruisers  for  months.  That  means  that  we  must  con- 
vince Milady  of  our  innocence  before  this  sea  trip  is  over. 
And  how  are  we  to  do  that?  One  of  us  has  just  got  to  go 
and  make  friends  with  her  —  make  love  to  her  if  necessary 
—  and  tell  her  what  good  little  boys  we  all  are  and  how 
we're  off  for  a  summer  spree  over  Belgium  and  Holland. 
Probably  he'll  also  have  to  occupy  her  attention,  if  she  stays 
in  Antwerp,  while  the  others  do  the  work." 

"  Excellent,"  said  Umpleby.  "  The  question  is,  who's  to 
be  the  man.  .  .  .  I'm  afraid  I'm  not  a  very  romantic  figure, 
and  I'm  married  anyway." 

"  It's  your  plan,  Hektor,"  said  Bernard,  "  so  you'd  better 
carry  it  out." 

"  I  haven't  the  required  artistic  imagination,"  said  Hektor. 
"  Besides,  you're  the  best  looking." 

"  No,  thank  you,"  said  Bernard.  "  I'm  not  used  to  ad- 
venturesses." 

"  Don't  be  shy,"  said  Umpleby.     "  If  I  had  your  advan- 


308  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

tages    I'd   do   it   like   a   shot.  .  .  .  Look   at   her   profile." 

"  Come  on,  Bernard,"  said  Hektor.  "  It's  up  to  you. 
What's  the  good  of  a  handsome  face  if  you  won't  put  it  to 
your  country's  service  ?  " 

"  Oh,  very  well,"  assented  Bernard,  with  a  grimace. 
"  But  I'm  going  below  first  for  a  bracer." 

It  happened  that  Milady  had  decided  on  Bernard,  the 
youngest  and  most  guileless-looking  of  the  party,  as  the  one 
for  her  to  pump,  so,  both  parties  being  anxious  for  an  excuse 
to  meet,  they  were  not  long  in  making  one.  Bernard,  hav- 
ing emerged  from  the  saloon  well  primed  with  whiskey  and 
soda,  found  his  legs  entangled  by  Milady's  silk  wrap  which 
the  rough  breeze  had  torn  from  her  shoulders.  To  restore 
it  was  but  common  courtesy;  to  remain,  charmed  by  her 
beauty  and  the  limpid  sweetness  of  her  voice,  for  a  few 
moments'  conversation  was  to  be  expected;  the  hint  that  she 
was  tired  and  would  like  a  seat  quite  naturally  suggested 
deck-chairs  for  two  in  a  sheltered  spot.  Friendship  and 
even  love,  come  quickly  on  the  decks  of  liners,  and  it  need 
occasion  no  surprise  to  find  Bernard  and  Milady  chatting 
together  like  old  friends  two  hours  out  from  Harwich.  At 
first  each  was  content  merely  to  make  a  good  impression  and 
create  confidence  in  the  mind  of  the  other.  But  after  a  time 
their  ultimate  purposes  came  into  play. 

Looking  at  her,  Bernard  found  it  hard  to  believe  that  she 
could  be  a  spy,  for  she  was  undeniably  beautiful.  She  had 
golden  hair,  a  clear  ivory  complexion  faintly  tinged  with 
pink,  and  very  red  lips,  which,  on  parting  in  a  smile,  revealed 
a  set  of  teeth  as  nearly  resembling  pearls  as  Bernard  had  ever 
seen.  But  the  most  distinguished  characteristic  about  her 
was  the  colour  of  her  eyes:  they  were  a  rich  brown.  Ber- 
nard wondered  for  a  moment  where  he  had  seen  brown  eyes 
with  fair  hair  before.  In  a  moment  he  remembered.  .  .  . 
Mabel  Harvey.  But  Mabel's  hair  was  not  of  this  metallic 
sheen,  but  of  the  commonplace  fluffy  kind. 

"  I  knew  a  girl  just  like  you  at  home,"  declared  Bernard 
romantically.  "  She  had  just  your  hair  and  eyes." 


GUNS  309 

"  Had?  "  queried  Milady. 

"  She's  nothing  to  me,  any  more,"  said  Bernard  ruefully. 
"  She  encouraged  me  and  led  me  on,  and  then  just  threw 
me  aside.  .  .  .  That's  why  I'm  here.  I'm  travelling  so  as 
to  forget." 

"  I  must  say  you  don't  seem  to  find  forgetting  very  diffi- 
cult. You  always  seemed  quite  cheerful  whenever  I  looked 
at  you." 

"  I  was  very  fortunate  in  meeting  those  two  men  you  saw 
me  with.  ...  Mr.  Umpleby,  the  small  man  with  the 
moustache,  is  one  of  the  wittiest  people  I've  ever  met.  He 
has  sometimes  almost  made  me  forget  my  sorrow." 

"  Indeed.     I  should  like  to  meet  him." 

"  So  you  shall,  if  I  can  manage  it.  Unfortunately  he's 
extremely  shy.  One  of  the  most  unassuming  and  retiring 
men  I  ever  saw.  With  his  friends  he's  delightful,  but  he 
absolutely  shrinks  from  strangers." 

"  Really?     He  doesn't  look  it." 

"  No.  But  it's  a  fact.  However,  I'll  introduce  him  to 
you  if  I  get  an  opportunity.  .  .  .  You've  no  idea  what  a 
kind-hearted  soul  he  is  too.  He  was  going  to  France  by 
Southampton  originally  and  had  ordered  himself  a  special 
carriage  (on  account  of  his  shyness,  you  know)  but  when 
my  friend  Mr.  O'Flaherty  told  him  of  my  misfortune  that 
evening  he  changed  all  his  plans  and  came  with  us,  just  to 
cheer  me  up.  ...  You  see,  poor  O 'Flaherty's  a  good  fellow, 
but  very  dull.  I  don't  know  why  I  chose  him  as  a  fellow 
traveller,  but  it  doesn't  matter  now  that  I've  Umpleby.  .  .  . 
and  you,"  he  added  shyly,  ".  .  .  that  is,  if  I  may  venture 
to  hope  for  your  continued  friendship." 

"Is  the  fair  —  what  is  her  name?  —  forgotten  so  soon 
then  ?  " 

"  Blanche?     Alas,  why  do  you  remind  me  of  her?  " 

"  Poor  boy!  I'm  sorry.  .  .  .  This  Mr.  Umpleby,  won't 
you  introduce  him  to  me  soon  ?  " 

"  Yes.  But  not  yet.  Let  me  have  you  to  myself  awhile 
first.  .  .  .  Almost  you  make  me  ...  forget." 


3io  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  The  other  gentleman  then, —  Mr.  O'Flaherty,  I  think 
you  called  him  —  has  been  with  you  from  the  start  ?  Where 
did  you  meet  Mr.  Umpleby?  " 

"  On  the  mail  boat  from  Ireland." 

"  Ah !  You  are  from  Ireland  ?  There's  a  great  deal  of 
excitement  going  on  over  there  now,  isn't  there  ?  " 

"  Yes.  My  friend  O'Flaherty  is  a  great  politician.  He's 
one  of  these  Nationalist  Volunteers  in  fact.  I  caught  his 
enthusiasm  for  a  time  myself,  and  even  drilled  once  or 
twice.  But  I  must  confess  politics  interest  me  very  little. 
I  think  it  would  be  a  wise  thing  to  have  a  sort  of  Council  in 
Dublin  to  decide  purely  local  affairs  too  trifling  to  submit 
to  Westminster,  but  we  are  really  unfit  for  full  Home  Rule. 
My  father,  of  course,  is  a  strong  Unionist  and  wouldn't 
even  agree  to  a  Council,  but  I  think  that's  so  unreasonable. 
.  .  .  But  perhaps  I'm  boring  you.  I  must  apologize  for 
talking  politics." 

"  Thank  heaven  for  the  gift  of  the  gab,"  said  Bernard 
to  himself.  He  had  never  found  his  tongue  so  fluent.  On 
any  subject  that  came  up  he  talked  gracefully  and  at  great 
length,  giving  her  no  opportunity  of  getting  in  her  sidelong 
tentative  questions.  He  brought  Milady  tea  on  deck,  sup- 
plied her  with  cigarettes  (the  best  Sullivans),  and  in  the 
evening  took  her  down  to  dinner  on  his  arm.  She  ceased 
her  probing  and  he  ceased  his  inventions  and  they  talked 
agreeably  about  books  and  music  and  the  pictures  they  in- 
tended to  visit  at  Antwerp,  where  they  hoped  to  meet  again, 
and  at  Munich,  whither  Milady  professed  herself  bound  and 
where  she  longed,  so  she  said,  for  Mr.  Lascelles  to  follow 
her. 

The  steamer  still  throbbed  its  way  over  the  water,  and  in 
the  evening  they  watched  the  moon  rise,  standing  together 
looking  over  the  stern.  Bernard  had  almost  come  to  believe 
as  firmly  in  her  innocence  as  Milady  had  in  his,  but  he  stuck 
to  his  pose. 

He  became  very  romantic  in  the  dusk  and  quoted  Yeates' 
poem  beginning: 


GUNS  311 

One  that  is  ever  kind  said  yesterday: 

Your  well-beloved's  hair  has  threads  of  grey. 

And  when  he  came  to  those  last  despairing  lines: 

O,   Heart,  O,   Heart,  if  she'd  but  turn  her  head, 
You'd  know  the  folly  of  being  comforted, 

Milady  put  a  kindly  hand  on  his  arm  and  consoled  him  so 
gently  for  his  loss  that  he  felt  quite  ashamed  of  his  decep- 
tion. 

As  midnight  approached  most  of  the  passengers  went  be- 
low, and  eventually  they  were  alone  on  deck.  And  as  they 
reached  the  mouth  of  the  Scheldt  and  saw  the  lights  of 
Flushing  twinkling  on  the  port  bow  Bernard  and  Milady 
bade  one  another  a  tender  good-night  and  went  to  their  re- 
spective cabins.  Bernard  gave  Hektor  a  full  report  of  his 
doings,  and  Hektor  chuckled  with  amusement. 

"  We've  been  consulting  Baedeker's  hotel  list,"  said  he. 
"  Where's  Milady  going  to  put  up?  " 

"  Hotel  de  1'Europe,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Then  Umpleby  and  I  will  go  to  the  Grand  Laboureur 
on  the  Place  de  Meir.  Where  would  you  fancy  for  your- 
self?" 

"  An  English  hotel  for  me,  if  you  please.  My  French 
was  made  in  Ashbury:  damn  little  and  pronounced  wrong." 

"  Well,  here's  the  thing  for  you."  Turning  over  the 
pages  of  Baedeker  he  read  out:  "  Hotel  d'Angleterre. 
Quai  Vandyck.  Under  English  management  .  .  ." 

He  broke  off  suddenly  as  Bernard,  winking  one  eye  hard, 
began  to  spout  thus: 

"  I  tell  you,  my  boy,  she's  perfect  .  .  .  adorable.  Didn't 
you  see  her  hair,  her  eyes?  .  .  .  Oh,  Hektor,  the  self  same 
hair  and  eyes.  .  .  .  My  Blanche !  " 

"  Cheer  up,  old  chap,"  said  Hektor  gruffly,  "  she  seemed 
to  take  to  you  all  right." 

"  Do  you  think  so?     Really?    Ah,  no  .  .  ." 

"  Get  into  bed  anyhow,  I'm  sleepy,"  said  Hektor. 


3i2  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

A  few  seconds  later  Bernard,  cautiously  opening  the  door, 
peered  out  and  saw  a  black  figure  retreating  down  the  pas- 
sage. 

"  Milady,"  he  said  to  Hektor.  "  I  heard  a  slight  rustle 
at  the  door  that  time  I  started  spouting.  .  .  .  We've  no 
doubt  of  her  now,  I'm  afraid." 

"  Well,"  said  Hektor,  "  go  on  as  you've  begun.  May  you 
have  a  pleasant  time  at  Antwerp." 

3 

Next  morning  Bernard  insisted  on  escorting  Milady  to 
her  hotel. 

"  But  your  friends?  "  she  said. 

"  I  have  no  other  friends  when  you  are  near,"  said  Ber- 
nard. 

She  invited  him  to  breakfast  with  her.  The  Hotel  de 
1'Europe  is  run  on  English  lines,  so  Bernard,  whose  hatred 
of  England  did  not  extend  to  the  national  dish,  feasted  full 
on  bacon  and  eggs  paid  for  by  British  secret  service  money. 
After  the  meal  he  excused  himself,  saying  that  he  really 
must  go  to  see  his  friends,  and  at  the  same  time  expressing 
a  timid  hope  that  he  might  meet  her  again  in  the  afternoon. 
She  graciously  granted  his  request  and  asked  where  he  and 
his  friends  were  staying. 

"  The  Rose  d'Or,"  he  told  her  and,  anticipating  inquiries, 
went  there  straightway  and  booked  and  paid  for  three  rooms 
on  his  way  over  to  the  Grand  Laboureur. 

Hektor  and  Umpleby  were  arranging  their  line  of  action. 
Hektor  was  to  purchase  the  guns  and  was  already  compiling 
a  list  of  gunsmiths  from  a  big  directory,  while  Umpleby  was 
to  see  about  hiring  some  craft  suitable  for  conveying  the 
cargo  to  the  rendezvous,  and  was  ready  to  set  out.  Bernard 
was  told  to  go  and  keep  Milady  quiet,  so  he  left  at  once  and 
repaired  to  his  own  hotel  to  wait  for  the  afternoon.  Not 
having  anticipated  the  nature  of  his  share  in  the  expedition 
he  was  poorly  provided  for  gallantry  in  the  matter  of  clothes, 
so  on  his  way  home  he  went  to  a  tailor  and  ordered  a  fashion- 


GUNS  313 

able  suit  of  clothes  to  be  made  for  him  at  once.  Then  he 
went  to  a  barber  and  a  florist,  and,  adorned  by  these  minis- 
ters of  beauty,  after  a  light  lunch  at  the  Angleterre,  he  went 
to  pay  his  respects  to  Milady. 

She  suggested  a  quiet  afternoon's  sight-seeing,  so  they  went 
out  into  the  glowing  sunshine  o£  the  Place  Verte.  Milady 
was  no  longer  in  black.  She  wore  a  delicious-looking  white 
summer  frock  and  carried  a  dainty  parasol.  Bernard  be- 
gan almost  to  fall  genuinely  a  victim  to  her  charms.  What 
a  pity,  he  thought,  that  such  a  beautiful  creature  should  have 
to  earn  her  living  in  so  base  a  way.  They  duly  admired  the 
statue  of  Rubens  in  the  centre  of  the  Place  and  then  turned 
to  regard  the  magnificent  facade  of  the  Cathedral,  whose 
south  transept  rose  above  them.  They  entered  and  inspected 
the  interior  of  the  building,  and  Bernard  pondered  long  over 
Rubens'  great  picture,  "  The  Descent  from  the  Cross,"  and, 
scarcely  inferior  to  it,  his  "  Elevation  of  the  Cross." 

"  I  wonder  why  all  these  great  painters  love  to  put  dogs 
in  their  pictures,"  said  Milady,  and  Bernard's  mind  trav- 
elled back  to  the  Ghirlandaio  and  Perugino  chromolitho- 
graphs at  Ashbury  before  which  he  had  so  often  asked  him- 
self the  same  question.  Through  the  majestic  nave  and 
aisles  of  the  Cathedral  they  wandered  for  nearly  an  hour, 
and  then  went  out  again  to  the  Place.  They  strolled  about 
the  busy  streets,  rested  for  a  while  at  a  cafe,  visited  some 
shops,  and  altogether  spent  a  very  pleasant  afternoon. 

"  How  well  their  streets  are  named,"  thought  Bernard. 
"  Avenue  des  Arts,  Avenue  Rubens,  Rue  Van  Dyck."  He 
compared  them  with  the  Dublin  streets,  all  called  after  de- 
parted Lords  Lieutenant.  "  When  independence  comes  we 
must  change  all  that.  .  .  .  Wolfe  Tone  Street.  .  .  .  Srdid 
Eoghain  Ruaidh  O'Neill  .  .  .  Yes.  The  Irish  way  sounds 
better.  .  .  .  Srdid  Seumuis  Fiontdin  Ldlor.  .  .  .  Rue  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau." 

"  Penny  for  your  thoughts?  "  said  Milady. 

"  I'm  feeling  hungry,"  said  Bernard.  "  Where  shall  we 
dine?" 


3H  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Milady  suggested  the  Restaurant  Bertrand,  and  thither 
they  went.  Then,  having  wound  up  the  evening  at  a  music 
hall,  Bernard  saw  her  to  her  hotel,  and  parted  from  her 
after  arranging  to  visit  the  picture  galleries  the  following 
day. 

"  Does  she  still  suspect  us?  That's  the  question,"  said 
Bernard  to  himself.  "  If  she  doesn't,  she  wouldn't  go  on 
gadding  about  with  me.  On  the  other  hand,  if  she  does, 
she  wouldn't  let  me  keep  her  off  the  track  so  easily.  .  .  . 
Perhaps  she  thinks  I'm  just  an  innocent  red-herring  dragged 
after  the  others.  She  certainly  did  keep  coming  back  to  their 
whereabouts  very  frequently.  .  .  .  Wonder  did  my  jealousy 
stunt  work?  .  .  .  I'll  have  to  convince  her  of  the  innocence 
of  the  others.  There's  nothing  else  for  it.  They'll  have  to 
meet  her.  .  .  .  I'll  go  straight  over  and  see  them  now  — 
stop  though.  Home  first.  She  might  be  following  me." 

He  made  for  the  Rose  d'Or,  and  after  spending  half  an 
hour  in  one  of  the  rooms  there  slipped  out  by  a  tradesmen's 
entrance,  thus  escaping  the  observation  of  Milady,  who,  true 
to  his  surmise,  had  followed  him  all  the  way. 

Hektor  was  much  perturbed  by  Bernard's  suggestion. 

"  We  haven't  the  time,"  he  said.  "  We  drew  blank  to- 
day. I  visited  five  gunsmiths  and  they  were  all  too  inquisi- 
tive to  deal  with.  Umpleby's  story  is  the  same." 

"  All  the  gunsmiths  in  the  world  won't  help  us  if  Milady 
gets  suspicious." 

"  Quite  true,"  said  Umpleby.  "  Lascelles  is  right.  We'd 
better  see  her." 

"  I  believe  you're  smitten,"  said  Hektor. 

"  Now,  boys,  this  is  serious,"  said  Bernard.  "  When  you 
meet  her  remember  to  keep  up  your  characters.  Umpleby, 
you're  as  shy  as  a  schoolgirl  with  a  witty  sparkle  about  once 
an  hour,  and  you,  Hektor,  are  the  dullest  bore  in  Europe. 
.  .  .  You'll  hear  from  me  tomorrow.  Good-night." 

Next  day,  after  a  couple  of  hours  spent  with  Van  Dyck, 
Teniers,  Memling,  Holbein,  Rubens  and  other  masters, 


GUNS  315 

enough  altogether  to  stagger  the  mind,  Milady  asked  the 
usual  question. 

"  I'm  sure  they'll  be  delighted  at  the  honour,"  replied 
Bernard,  and  they  made  arrangements  for  meeting  which  he 
communicated  that  night  to  his  friends. 

The  three  presented  themselves  at  her  hotel  next  after- 
noon and  they  then  drove  off  to  the  Zoological  Gardens, 
where  they  strolled  about  and  had  tea.  Milady  afterwards 
professed  herself  charmed  by  "  that  dull,  droll  Mr.  O'Flah- 
erty,"  but  was  thoroughly  bored  by  poor  Umpleby's  stories. 
Hektor  had  acted  his  part  to  perfection,  but  Umpleby  in  his 
vanity  had  cast  away  all  pretence  at  shyness  at  a  very  early 
stage  and  striven  to  exhibit  his  wit. 

"  My  poor  Bernard,"  said  Milady,  "  is  that  your  taste  in 
humour?  The  man  is  far  duller  than  Mr.  O'Flaherty,  and 
unfortunately  does  not  know  it." 

"  He  has  been  very  kind  to  me,"  said  Bernard. 

"So  I  mustn't  abuse  him,  eh?"  said  Milady.  "Very 
well.  But  don't  bring  him  near  me  again." 

"  He'll  be  disappointed  .  .  .  distracted." 

"  No  matter.     I  could  not  endure  him." 

"  Your  wishes  shall  be  obeyed,  Madam,"  said  Bernard, 
much  relieved. 

Milady's  suspicions  were  now  almost  dispelled,  but  she 
was  enjoying  herself  so  much  at  her  employers'  expense  that 
she  decided  to  remain  in  Antwerp  a  little  longer.  More- 
over, she  had  taken  rather  a  fancy  to  Bernard  and  wanted  to 
see  a  little  more  of  him,  so  for  the  next  few  days  the  two  of 
them  went  about  together,  flirting,  picnicking,  and  sight- 
seeing. 

On  the  eighth  day  of  their  stay  Hektor  at  length  an- 
nounced that  he  had  found  a  suitable  gunsmith,  one  who 
was  ready  to  give  them  two  thousand  rifles  and  fifty  thou- 
sand rounds  of  ammunition  for  their  money,  and  who  asked 
no  questions.  Umpleby,  however,  had  not  yet  found  a  boat- 
man, and  the  two  were  going  to  continue  the  search  next 


316  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

day.  So  Bernard  continued  his  round  of  pleasure  with 
Milady  and  on  the  evening  of  the  twelfth  of  July  came 
again  to  inquire  after  his  friends'  progress. 

"  I  wish  to  heaven  you'd  hurry  up,"  he  said.  "  My  virtue 
won't  stand  the  strain  of  perpetual  temptation,  you  know." 

"  It's  in  your  country's  cause,"  said  Hektor.  "  However, 
it's  all  right  now.  WVve  found  our  man,  a  sturdy  Fleming 
called  Klapdorp.  He  was  a  bit  inquisitive  —  the  Belgians 
are  the  most  inquisitive  people  I've  ever  struck  —  so  we  told 
him  we  were  running  the  guns  into  Mexico  for  Villa.  That 
satisfied  him." 

"  Two  days  to  wait  now,"  said  Umpleby. 

"  I  say,"  said  Hektor.  "  You'd  best  arrange  an  all-night 
entertainment  for  Milady  tomorrow.  We'll  be  loading  up 
then." 

4 

So  to  make  quite  sure  that  his  friends  should  have  a  free 
hand  in  the  most  arduous  portion  of  their  task  Bernard  took 
Milady  to  a  great  public  dance  that  night.  It  was  a  sum- 
mer dance,  and  took  place  in  a  great  hall  that  opened  into 
wonderful  spacious  gardens  where  the  dancers  could  wander 
to  refresh  themselves  during  the  intervals.  Bernard  enjoyed 
the  whole  thing  tremendously.  Always  full  of  the  zest  of 
life,  now  the  importance  of  the  moment  and  the  anticipation 
of  a  rush  of  events  to  come,  increased  the  natural  excitement 
due  to  music,  crowds  and  festivity.  He  and  Milady  were 
quite  the  gayest  of  the  gay  throng. 

He  called  for  her  at  half-past  six  and  they  went  to  the 
Queen's  Hotel  to  dine.  Milady  looked  adorable  and  Ber- 
nard's admiration  for  her  was  immense.  His  emotions  were 
really  beginning  to  be  stirred  and  he  was  not  a  little  proud  to 
have  so  brilliant  a  companion  to  show  off.  Mrs.  Gunby 
Rourke  at  a  neighbouring  table  saw  the  sparkle  in  his  eye 
and  whispered  something  to  her  husband. 

"  An  adventuress,  I  suppose,"  replied  the  latter.  "  Young 
fool." 

"  Mischief  thou  art  afoot,"  thought  Bernard,  as  he  noticed 


GUNS  317 

her  presence  and  returned  her  distant  bow.  "  Lord,  this'll 
be  all  over  Dublin  when  she  gets  home.  What'll  my  mother 
say?  " 

They  walked  in  the  delicious  evening  air  to  the  dance  hall, 
and  arriving  early  had  some  good  dances  before  the  floor 
filled  up. 

"  I'm  glad  we  had  these  dances,"  said  Milady.  "  We  can 
sit  out  when  the  crush  comes.  .  .  .  You  dance  beautifully." 

She  danced  like  a  leaf  herself  and  Bernard  was  intoxicated 
with  the  charm  of  her.  She  thought  he  was  hers  as  they 
stood  in  the  garden  later,  and  remembering  her  almost  for- 
gotten duty,  she  laid  a  hand  on  his  shoulder  and  putting  her 
face  close  to  his  said : 

"  You  may  as  well  admit  it.  You're  here  to  plot  with 
Germany,  aren't  you  ?  " 

But  she  was  premature,  and  she  had  hit  the  wrong  nail. 
Had  she  mentioned  guns,  Bernard  might  have  given  himself 
away,  but  she  was  sure  that  his  mission,  if  mission  he  had, 
was  something  bigger  than  that. 

"  Germany!  Me! "  said  Bernard,  with  well  feigned 
astonishment. 

"  I  believe  you,"  she  cried,  and  kissed  him  suddenly.  He 
returned  the  embrace  with  ardour  and  said,  with  all  the 
reproachfulness  he  could  muster: 

"  Felice,  you  should  never  have  doubted  me." 

"  Forgive  me,"  she  pleaded,  and  he  did  so  magnanimously. 

The  band  was  playing  the  familiar,  sensuous  strains  of 
Offenbach's  Barcarolle.  They  retired  to  a  secluded  nook  in 
the  garden  and  surrendered  themselves  to  the  enjoyment  of 
each  other's  society.  Milady  stretched  out  her  legs  in  front 
of  her  and  looked  admiringly  at  her  graceful  feet  and  ankles, 
Bernard  was  tempted  to  quoth  a  favourite  triolet  of 
O'Dwyer's: 

"  Why  are  ladies  ashamed 

To  show  us  their  ankles? 

«,«  i    <  -  I  have  often  exclaimed  -  ••  '-\  •- 

'Why  are  ladies  ashamed?' 


3i8  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

When   I   looked   I  was  blamed 

And  the  memory  rankles. 
Why  are  ladies  ashamed 

To  show  us  their  ankles  ?  " 

"  We  aren't  nowadays,  anyway,"  laughed  Milady.  "  Did 
you  write  that  ?  " 

"  No.     It's  by  a  friend  of  mine." 

"  I'd  give  anything  to  be  able  to  write  poetry,"  said 
Milady. 

"  So  would  I.     Anything  .  .  .  with  one  exception." 

"What's  that?" 

"  You,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Fickle  boy!  "  said  Milady.     "  And  what  of  Blanche?  " 

"She  is  nothing  to  me  ...  she  is  forgotten  .  .  .  she 
never  was." 

And  all  night  long  while  these  gallantries  were  in  progress 
Hektor  and  Umpleby  were  assisting  Klapdorp  and  his  men 
to  load  the  tug  Van  Dyck  from  the  quays  of  the  Scheldt. 

"  Artistic  nation  this,"  observed  Hektor  during  a  resting 
space.  "  This  is  the  Quai  Tenters,  and  the  tug's  called  the 
Van  Dyck.  .  .  .  Better  than  Ormand  Quay  and  the  Mary 
Ann,  eh?  " 

They  were  in  bed  by  four  o'clock,  but  it  was  five  before 
Bernard  left  Milady  at  the  Hotel  de  1'Europe. 

5 

Later  in  the  morning  the  tug  stood  with  steam  up  at  the 
quay  side.  Hektor  and  Umpleby  were  already  on  board, 
and  at  the  stroke  of  eight  Bernard,  white-faced  and  weary, 
alighted  from  a  taxi  at  the  head  of  the  gangway. 

"  Gee,  you've  been  making  a  night  of  it,"  said  Hektor. 
"  You're  a  regular  wash-out." 

"  My  first  need  is  something  to  eat,"  said  Bernard.  "  I 
hadn't  time  for  breakfast." 

As  the  Van  Dyck's  screw  began  to  churn  up  the  waters 
of  the  Scheldt  they  took  him  below  and  rummaged  out  a 
meal  of  ham,  bread,  cheese,  and  bottled  beer.  While  Ber- 


GUNS  319 

nard  made  hungry  inroads  into  these  he  told  them  about  the 
night's  adventures,  and  how  before  leaving  he  had  left  three 
letters  with  the  Commissionaire  at  his  hotel  to  be  posted  on 
three  successive  days.  In  the  first  he  begged  to  be  excused 
from  meeting  Milady  that  day  owing  to  a  headache  resulting 
from  the  dance;  in  the  second  he  pleaded  continued  indis- 
position, but  promised  to  call  on  her  next  day;  the  third  let- 
ter ran  thus: 

/  die  for  love  of  Blanche.     No  flowers  by  request. 

"  I'd  like  to  see  her  face  when  she  reads  that,"  said  Um- 
pleby,  gleefully. 

"  I  wouldn't,"  said  Bernard.  "  I  was  beginning  to  like 
her." 

Down  the  busy  commerce-filled  Scheldt  they  sped,  out 
from  the  narrow  river  into  the  broad  estuary.  They  passed 
Walsoorden  at  half-past  nine  and  Xerneuzen  an  hour  later. 
By  twelve  they  had  left  Flushing  behind  and  were  speeding 
to  the  rendezvous,  a  spot  five  miles  out  from  the  Zeeland 
coast.  Before  they  reached  it  they  could  see  two  widely 
separated  craft  converging  towards  them. 

"  Those  are  our  men,"  said  Hektor,  confidently. 

As  they  watched  eagerly  the  foremost  yacht  swiftly  bore 
down  on  them.  Nearer  she  came  and  nearer,  and  they  could 
distinguish  the  figures  on  her  deck. 

"  Is  it  dese  are  your  Mexican  friends?  "  inquired  Klap- 
dorp  of  Hektor. 

"  Oh,  wee,"  said  Hektor.     "  At  least,  je  pense  ainsi" 

Someone  standing  in  the  bows  of  the  yacht  shouted  some- 
thing unintelligible  through  a  megaphone,  but  in  a  few 
minutes  more  the  screws  of  the  Van  Dyck  were  reversed, 
bringing  her  to,  and  the  yacht  came  near  enough  for  them  to 
see  that  the  man  with  the  megaphone  was  Angus  O'Connor. 

"  Connis  thah  thu  ?  "  came  Angus's  cultured  voice  across 
the  water.  "  Are  you  the  tug  with  the  guns  for  Ahre- 
land?" 


320  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Qu'est-ce  quil  dit?  "  asked  Klapdorp,  suspiciously,  turn- 
ing to  Umpleby. 

"  We're  done,"  thought  Bernard,  but  O'Connor's  accent 
would  have  baffled  people  more  skilled  in  English  than  the 
little  Belgian  skipper. 

"  Je  ne  sais  pas,"  said  Umpleby,  blandly.  "  //  park 
Mexican  peut-etre."  Then  he  shouted  over  to  O'Connor: 
"  Dun  do  bheal,  dtuigeann  tu.  To.  tu  amaddn." 

O'Connor  grinned  and  called  back: 

"  Dhia  smirrah  guth." 

"  Vous  parlez  done  —  Mexican?"  asked  Klapdorp  of 
Umpleby. 

"  Un  pen,"  said  Umpleby. 

The  Spindrift  now  hove  to  about  ten  cables  off,  and  the 
Cormorant,  which  had  come  up  in  the  meantime,  did  the 
same.  The  transhipping  of  the  cargo  began  at  once,  and 
was  carried  out  by  means  of  a  large  boat  carried  by  the  Van 
Dyck,  assisted  in  a  small  way  by  the  yachts'  dinghies.  It 
was  difficult  and  dangerous  work,  for  there  was  a  swell  on, 
and  the  ammunition  cases  in  particular  were  extremely 
heavy  and  awkward  to  handle,  but  by  good  luck  it  was  ac- 
complished without  mishap.  Bernard  went  on  board  the 
Spindrift  with  the  first  boatload,  and  drawing  O'Connor 
aside,  told  him  about  the  Mexican  fiction.  O'Connor  was 
delighted  and  thereupon  set  about  giving  the  thing  verisimili- 
tude by  shouting  a  fervent  "  Caramba!  "  at  every  hitch  in 
the  lading. 

The  Spindrift,  which  was  the  smaller  of  the  two  yachts, 
received  half  the  rifles  and  twenty  thousand  rounds  of  am- 
munition, and  as  soon  as  she  was  loaded  sailed  off  amid  a 
salvo  of  cheers.  The  Cormorant  was  then  loaded  up  in  her 
turn,  and  Bernard  bid  good-bye  to  his  companions  on  the 
deck  of  the  Van  Dyck. 

"  I'll  have  Umpleby  all  to  myself  now,"  said  Hektor,  rue- 
fully. "  He's  just  removing  the  twenty-first  bracket  from 
the  fiftieth  sentence  in  his  sixtieth  story.  .  .  .  Well  .  .  . 
see  you  at  Howth." 


GUNS  321 

Bernard  dropped  into  the  dinghy  and  was  carried  over  to 
the  Cormorant.  The  Van  Dyck  immediately  got  up  steam 
and  pointed  back  for  Antwerp.  The  Spindrift  could  be  seen 
as  a  speck  on  the  horizon. 


They  were  twelve  days  at  sea,  and  it  was  a  most  uncom- 
fortable time.  Being  heavily  laden  their  progress  was  nec- 
essarily slow,  and  in  any  case  they  dared  not  rouse  suspicion 
by  appearing  off  the  Irish  coast  too  soon.  The  fifteen  cases 
of  ammunition  were  stacked  round  the  deck,  and,  in  order  to 
ensure  speed  in  unloading  at  Howth,  when  every  second 
might  be  of  importance,  the  rifles  were  unpacked  and  laid  in 
rows  on  the  floor  of  the  cabin  to  a  depth  of  four  feet.  It 
was  therefore  impossible  to  stand  up  in  the  cabin,  so  meals 
were  a  succession  of  scrappy  picnics  held  in  odd  corners  and 
sleep  was  a  process  of  little  comfort.  However,  for  all 
this,  everyone  was  very  cheery  and  full  of  a  spirit  of  ad- 
venture —  an  unfamiliar  feeling  in  those  civilized  days, 
when  Europe  had  been  at  peace  for  years  and  danger  and 
strife  had  been  banished  to  distant  parts  of  the  earth.  Not 
caring  to  trust  a  crew  of  paid  hands,  Calverley  had  enlisted 
the  help  of  a  few  personal  friends  who  were  excellent  com- 
pany. There  was  his  own  brother  Frank,  a  youthful  irre- 
sponsible replica  of  himself ;  and  Morgan,  a  very  sentimental 
English  Home  Ruler  —  a  good  sort  but  destitute  of  tact, 
who  was  always  talking  of  his  sympathy  for  "  poor  Ire- 
land"; and  McCarthy,  a  cheery  young  London  Irishman, 
who  talked  a  good  deal  and  played  a  concertina.  Calverley, 
himself,  was  as  good  a  host  as  he  was  a  sailor  and  was  the 
life  and  soul  of  the  party. 

On  the  second  day  of  the  cruise  as  they  sailed  slowly  up 
the  English  Channel,  the  weather  being  fine  and  the  sea 
calm,  they  were  all  basking  on  deck,  except  Frank  Calverley, 
who  was  at  the  helm,  while  McCarthy  played  snatches  on 
his  concertina.  Suddenly,  the  later  said: 

"  Give  us  a  song,  Morgan.     I'll  accompany  you." 


322  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Morgan,  who  had  a  fair  baritone  voice,  was  quite  ready  to 
oblige,  and  with  the  best  intentions  in  the  world,  meaning 
only  to  compliment,  sang  the  following  song: 

" '  Don't  be  ashamed  you're  Irish,' 

Said  a  mother  to  her  son. 
'  Wherever  you  roam,  over  the  foam, 

Or  under  the  tropic  sun. 
Be  true  to  the  land  of  the  Shamrock 

Whatever  the  world  may  say, 

And  come  back  to  Erin  where  the  grass  grows  green 
Next  St  Patrick's  Day.'" 

It  was  a  terrible  ordeal  to  endure,  and  it  was  a  trying 
business  to  frame  suitable  words  of  applause.  Calverley 
looked  his  sympathy  at  Bernard  and  tried  to  start  a  conversa- 
tion that  might  prevent  a  resumption  of  Morgan's  vocal 
activity.  But  to  no  purpose.  The  dense  young  man  in- 
sisted on  singing  again  and  this  time  produced,  to  the  air  of 
The  Wearing  of  the  Green,  one  of  those  monstrous  "  loyal  " 
parodies  of  rebel  songs,  composed  by  some  well-meaning  fool 
of  an  Englishman  like  himself.  It  was  called  The  Red 
Entwined  with  Green. 

Bernard  was  seething  with  disgust  and  irritation.  He  lay 
back  on  deck  with  his  eyes  shut  and  longed  for  the  genius 
of  O'Dwyer  to  inspire  him  with  retaliatory  measures.  .  .  . 
A  line,  born  of  pure  rage,  suddenly  formed  itself  in  his 
brain.  He  twisted  and  turned  it  and  strove  to  match  it  as 
he  lay  there  oblivious  to  Morgan's  drone.  Fresh  ideas  oc- 
curred to  him.  As  he  wrought  the  lines  into  shape  an  odd 
jingle  of  a  tune  he  had  heard  somewhere  fitted  them  to  its 
tempo  and  almost  before  he  was  aware  of  it  he  had  com- 
posed two  short  stanzas.  He  repeated  them  over  to  make 
sure  of  them  and  then  sat  up. 

"  Anyone  else  got  a  song?  "  asked  McCarthy. 

"  I  picked  up  a  little  thing  the  other  day,"  said  Bernard, 
modestly,  and  on  being  pressed  to  sing  it,  trolled  out  his  new- 
born ditty.  "  It's  called  Please  Keep  Off  the  Grass,"  he 
explained,  and  began : 


GUNS  323 

"You  may  slander,  abuse  us,  and  hate  us; 

You  may  curse  and  anathematize  us; 
You  may  plunder  and  exterminate  us; 
But,  Englishman,  don't  patronize  us. 

Some  day  we'll  forgive  the  Invasion 

And  the  rest  of  our  sorrows  and  wrongs 

(If  Freedom  should  grant  the  occasion), 
But  not  if  you  edit  our  songs." 

Morgan  smiled  fatuously,  but  failed  to  see  the  point,  but 
Bernard's  feelings  had  been  relieved  by  composition  and 
that  was  all  he  wanted.  He  could  see  Calverley's  eyes 
twinkling  with  amusement. 

That  afternoon  they  reached  Spithead,  and  passed  right 
through  the  historic  review  of  the  British  Fleet.  As  they 
gazed  upon  line  after  line  of  those  magnificent  ships,  Caver- 
ley  jestingly  said  to  Bernard: 

"  Don't  you  wish  you  were  an  Englishman  ?  " 

"  All  this  makes  our  little  cargo  sing  very  small,  doesn't 
it?  "  said  Bernard.  "  I  can't  believe  we'll  ever  be  free." 

"  I  confidently  hope  that  your  freedom  is  very  near,"  said 
Calverley.  "  Perseverance  does  it." 

The  following  day  they  passed  by  a  fleet  of  trawlers  which 
was  being  held  up  and  searched  by  a  British  cruiser.  The 
yacht  passed  by  all  unsuspected. 

"  By  gad !  "  exclaimed  Bernard.  "  Umpleby  must  have 
blithered.  Just  like  him.  It's  well  we  spun  him  that  yarn. 
Luck  seems  to  be  with  us  for  once." 

"What  did  he  say  when  he  saw  the  yachts?"  asked 
Calverley. 

"  Nothing,"  said  Bernard. 

"  That  was  wise  of  him.  It  was  all  he  could  say,  of 
course.  He'd  be  too  vain  to  ask  an  explanation." 

"  His  face  spoke  volumes,"  said  Bernard. 

Hitherto  the  weather  had  been  fine,  but  on  the  afternoon 
of  the  fifth  day,  forty  miles  south  of  the  Lizard,  a  darkening 
of  the  surface  of  the  sea  and  a  cold  nip  in  the  breeze  proph- 
esied a  change,  and  in  a  few  hours  the  storm  broke.  The 


324  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

next  two  days  were  one  long  thundering  drenching  con- 
fusion. Short-handed  as  they  were,  there  was  little  time  for 
anyone  to  rest,  and  Bernard  seemed  to  be  working  per- 
petually in  a  ceaseless  melee  with  wind  and  lashing  spray. 
The  Cormorant  was  a  yawl  and  she  rode  out  the  storm  safely 
on  reefed  mizzen  and  trysail.  Calverley,  himself,  never  left 
the  helm  for  more  than  a  few  moments  at  a  time.  Bernard 
marvelled  at  the  man's  skill  and  endurance,  and  wondered 
how  O'Connor,  without  half  his  ability,  would  weather  the 
storm.  On  the  second  day,  when  the  tempest  was  at  its 
height,  a  fresh  danger  manifested  itself.  Some  of  the  am- 
munition cases  began  to  work  loose  from  their  fastenings, 
and  two  of  them,  becoming  detached,  began  to  slide  and  roll 
about  the  deck.  It  was  an  anxious  moment.  All  hands  im- 
mediately hurried  up  to  prevent  disaster,  and  with  much  dif- 
ficulty, and  not  without  many  falls  and  bruises,  succeeded 
in  recapturing  the  cases,  and,  to  lighten  the  labouring  yawl, 
cast  them  overboard.  "  Four  thousand  rounds  gone  west," 
muttered  Bernard.  Then  fresh  fastenings  were  applied  to 
the, surviving  cases,  and  the  yawl  began  to  ride  across  the 
waves  more  buoyantly. 

Next  day  the  storm  had  somewhat  abated,  but  it  was  still 
blowing  hard.  They  had  been  carried  far  out  of  their 
course  and  were  now  driving  in  a  southwesterly  direction 
out  to  the  Atlantic.  The  weather-worn  Cormorant,  accord- 
ingly, went  about  and  began  to  beat  up  northward  almost 
in  the  teeth  of  the  gale:  a  long  and  bitter  struggle.  Yet 
another  anxious  night  was  spent,  but  in  the  morning  the 
sun  came  out  and  the  breeze  had  considerably  moderated 
its  violence.  They  were  able  to  heave  to  off  the  Scilly  Isles 
in  the  afternoon  and  discuss  the  position.  The  principal 
danger  now  was  from  British  cruisers,  for,  though  they 
knew  it  not,  the  Irish  sea  was  at  the  moment  being  actively 
searched  and  all  trawlers  were  being  held  up  and  boarded. 
Four  days  had  still  to  pass  before  the  Cormorant  was  ex- 
pected at  Howth,  and  they  spent  three  of  them  loitering 
about  the1  lee  side  of  the  Isles  as  if  for  pleasure. 


GUNS  325 

Meanwhile,  those  at  home  were  rendered  very  anxious 
by  the  arrival  of  His  Majesty's  Cruiser  Forward,  which 
about  this  time  took  up  her  station  just  outside  Dublin  Bay 
and  so  right  in  the  track  of  the  white  yacht  for  which  they 
were  eagerly  watching.  A  rumour  was  accordingly  spread 
amongst  the  numerous  people  in  Dublin  whose  indiscretion 
could  be  relied  on  that  gun-running  on  a  large  scale  was  to 
be  indulged  in  on  the  coast  of  \Vicklow.  The  result  was 
that  on  the  twenty-fourth  of  July  the  Forward  weighed 
anchor  and  steamed  south,  leaving  the*" way  clear  for  the 
Cormorant. 

Running  before  a  stiff  breeze  the  White  Yacht  scudded 
northward  all  through  the  night  of  Saturday  the  twenty- 
fifth,  and  in  the  morning  set  her  course  northwest,  heading 
straight  for  Howth.  At  breakfast  time  the  Dublin  Moun- 
tains rose  from  the  sea.  An  hour  later  they  sighted  Howth, 
and  as  the  hot  July  sun  mounted  to  the  meridian  they  passed 
obliquely  across  the  mouth  of  Dublin  Bay,  all  glittering  in 
his  rays,  rounded  the  Bailey,  and  came  in  full  view  of 
Howth  Harbour  and  Ireland's  Eye.  As  these  dear  familiar 
features,  so  reminiscent  of  childish  days,  slipped  into  Ber- 
nard's view  under  such  dramatic  circumstances  and  after 
such  strange  adventures,  something  seemed  to  clutch  at  his 
heart  and  he  was  suddenly  filled  with  a  wild  impatience  to 
leap  ashore  and  embrace  the  earth. 

Nearer  and  nearer  they  sailed.  They  reached  the  harbour 
mouth,  and  Bernard,  straining  his  eyes,  could  see  the  heads 
of  a  marching  column  of  men  above  the  sea  wall.  At  quar- 
ter to  one  exactly,  the  yacht  crossed  the  bar,  and  at  the  same 
moment  the  column  of  Volunteers,  one  thousand  strong, 
came  down  the  East  Pier  at  the  double.  The  yacht  was 
immediately  brought  alongside  and  the  unloading  began. 
At  first  the  sight  of  the  cargo  so  astonished  the  Volunteers 
that  they  broke  all  discipline  in  their  eagerness.  But  only 
for  a  moment.  Hektor,  Stephen,  and  the  other  officers  soon 
restored  order.  The  men  were  formed  up  in  two  lines  and 
the  rifles  were  passed  along  from  hand  to  hand,  while  a 


326  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

number  of  motors  came  up  and  whirled  off  with  the  ammuni- 
tion. Within  forty  minutes  the  work  of  unloading  was 
complete  and  Bernard,  stepping  ashore,  was  greeted  by 
Hektor  and  Stephen. 

One  of  Bernard's  first  enquiries  was  for  the  Spindrift, 
and  he  was  told  that  O'Connor  had  sent  home  word  that  he 
had  been  compelled  by  the  storm  to  seek  refuge  in  a  Welsh 
harbour  and  would  be  in  Ireland  next  week. 

Meanwhile,  the  alarm  had  been  given,  and  the  first  sign  of 
opposition  from  the  forces  of  the  crown  was  the  arrival 
alongside  the  yacht  of  a  boat  containing  three  or  four  coast- 
guards. They  were  easily  disposed  of.  A  firing  party  of 
half  a  dozen  men  pointed  empty  rifles  at  them  and  they  beat 
a  hasty  retreat.  At  the  same  time  a  few  police  tried  to  force 
an  entrance  to  the  pier,  but  were  repelled  by  a  rear  guard, 
armed  with  oak  cudgells,  who  had  been  drawn  across  the 
end  of  it.  The  most  persistent  enemy  was  the  old  Harbour 
Master,  who  came  up  clamouring  for  his  dues,  but  had  to 
go  empty  away. 

Preparations  were  now  being  made  for  departure,  and  a 
small  guard  was  told  off  to  remain  behind  and  secure  that 
the  Cormorant's  retreat  should  be  unmolested.  Bernard 
returned  on  board  to  bid  farewell  to  Calverley  and  then 
stepped  ashore  to  rejoin  Hektor  and  Stephen. 

"  I  suppose  I'd  better  go  and  join  my  company,"  he  said, 
as  the  commanding  officer  ordered  the  "  Fall  in."  "  Come 
to  my  digs  tonight,  you  two." 

He  went  at  once  and  reported  to  his  Captain,  the  pre- 
posterous Brohoon,  an  untidy  little  man  with  a  brown  beard 
and  a  general  air  of  self-satisfaction,  but  a  welcome  and 
homely  figure  to  the  wanderer  from  Antwerp  and  the  high 
seas.  Commands  rang  out: 

"Battalion  .  .  .  Shun!  Slope  .  .  .  Arms!  Move  to 
the  left  in  fours.  .  .  .  Form  fours!  .  .  .  Left!  By  the 
left  .  .  .  quick  .  .  .  march!  " 

An  Irish  army  was  marching  on  Dublin. 


GUNS  327 

7 

It  was  an  historic  moment;  the  beginning  of  a  new  act 
in  the  national  drama.  So  Bernard  thought  as,  rifle  on 
shoulder,  he  marched  by  Brohoon's  side  at  the  head  of  the 
column.  (It  happened  that  theirs  was  the  leading  com- 
pany. )  The  weapon  he  carried  was  a  long,  heavy,  wide-bore 
Mauser  of  an  old-fashioned  type,  but  strong  and  serviceable. 
His  spirits  were  high  and  he  was  fit  and  well  after  the  sea 
voyage.  It  was  rather  restful,  contrasted  with  all  he  had 
been  through,  to  listen  to  Brohoon  jabbering  small  talk. 
It  appeared  that  the  Redmonite  nominees  had  been  behaving 
very  badly  on  the  executive,  obstructing  at  the  meetings,  and 
preventing  progress,  and  evidently  trying  hard  to  break  up 
the  movement.  This  coup  would  come  as  a  shock  to  them, 
Brohoon  said,  and  added: 

"  See  if  they  don't  try  to  get  a  holt  of  the  guns  for  their 
own  crowd." 

Meanwhile  Bernard  was  wondering  what  lay  ahead  of 
them.  If  the  Government  could  collect  their  forces  in 
time  they  could  easily  hold  the  narrow  neck  of  land  joining 
Howth  to  the  mainland  against  the  Volunteers.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  the  Volunteers  could  once  pass  the  isthmus, 
they  had  a  choice  of  many  roads,  and  could,  if  necessary, 
break  up  into  small  bands  and  so  defy  interception.  The 
whole  success  of  the  expedition  depended,  therefore,  on 
reaching  Raheny  at  the  far  end  of  the  isthmus  in  time,  and 
the  weary  column  of  men  pressed  forward  at  their  best  pace 
in  that  direction. 

"  Can  we  do  it?  "  was  the  anxious  query  in  every  heart. 

For  a  breathless  moment  it  looked  as  if  they  had  failed. 
A  handful  of  constabulary,  armed  with  rifles,  awaited  them 
just  outside  Raheny,  but,  deeming  it  prudent  not  to  interfere 
with  so  large  a  force,  opposed  no  obstacle  to  their  advance. 
Raheny  was  reached  at  last  and  a  much  needed  halt  was 
called,  the  exhausted  Volunteers  lying  down  by  the  roadside 
at  once.  Their  weariness  was  understandable.  They  had 
been  mobilized  at  ten  that  morning  and  had  already  marched 


328  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

fifteen  miles  without  refreshment,  burdened  during  the  last 
five  with  their  exceptionally  heavy  rifles.  And  the  column 
was  made  up  of  very  uneven  material.  Many  of  the  men 
were  sturdy  labourers,  but  many  were  in  sedentary  employ- 
ment and  so  in  bad  physical  condition.  Many  were  poor 
and  their  footwear  was  unsound.  Many  were  oldish  men, 
many  mere  boys ;  none  had  imagined  when  starting  that  they 
were  out  for  anything  more  serious  than  a  route-march. 
Moreover,  the  day  was  hot,  and  to  add  to  their  discomfort 
they  had  encountered  a  shower  of  rain  just  after  leaving 
Howth. 

While  they  rested  one  of  the  advance  cycle  scouts  rode 
back  with  the  report  that  a  military  force  had  marched  out 
to  Clontarf,  a  mile  and  a  half  away,  and  seemed  ready  to 
dispute  the  passage.  At  once  the  order  to  fall  in  was  given 
and,  groaning  and  cursing,  the  dusty  and  footsore  men  tum- 
bled into  their  ranks  and  resumed  their  march.  Bernard 
wondered  whether  the  leaders  intended  to  fight  their  passage, 
but  the  truth  was  that  the  men  were  so  tired  that  the  staff 
had  decided  that  it  would  be  useless  to  attempt  any  manoeu- 
vres and  were  relying  on  bluff  and  good  fortune  to  carry 
them  through.  The  prospect  of  a  possible  conflict  made 
Bernard  ask  himself  what  his  sensations  were.  Was  he  ex- 
hilarated or  afraid?  He  was  surprised  to  find  that  he  was 
neither,  and  wondered  over  his  coolness.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  his  attitude  was  the  same  as  that  which  dominated  the 
whole  of  Europe,  prior  to  the  outbreak  of  the  great  War. 
He  was  so  used  to  civilization,  with  its  smoothness  and 
peacefulness,  that  he  did  not  really  believe  that  violence  was 
possible  in  this  quietest  of  all  possible  worlds.  His  whole 
habit  of  mind  led  him  to  believe  that,  by  what  chance  or 
miracle  mattered  not,  at  the  last  moment  things  would 
straighten  themselves  out  and  all  would  be  well. 

Painfully,  patiently,  the  leaden-footed  men  plodded  on- 
wards. Bernard  could  hear  Brohoon  muttering  things  about 
"  the  bloody  redcoats  " —  absurd  melodramatic  phrase  — 


GUNS  329 

under  his  breath.  Stray  complaints  and  curses  could  be 
heard  breaking  from  parched  lips  in  the  ranks.  Heavier  and 
heavier  grew  his  rifle.  Sweat  trickled  down  his  face.  .  .  . 
Then,  rounding  a  bend,  he  saw  the  line  of  soldiers  drawn 
right  across  the  road  a  hundred  yards  in  front  of  him.  .  .  . 

"Right  wheel!"  came  an  order  from  the  rear,  and  the 
column  turned  into  a  byway  that  led  to  the  Malahide  Road, 
parallel  with  that  on  which  they  were  marching.  It  was 
evident  that  the  Volunteer  leaders  wished  to  avoid  a  conflict, 
but  the  military  had  other  intentions.  Doubling  back  along 
the  tram  road  they  reformed  their  line  at  the  foot  of  the 
Malahide  Road.  The  police  were  drawn  up  on  the  side- 
walk in  front  of  them.  The  Volunteers  marched  straight 
on  and  halted  within  a  short  distance  of  the  flashing  bay- 
onets. After  a  tense  moment  of  expectation,  the  Volunteer 
staff,  amongst  whom  Bernard  could  see  Umpleby  looking 
immensely  important  and  pleased  with  himself,  went  for- 
ward to  negotiate  with  the  officers  of  the  Crown.  There 
were  a  few  moments  of  argument  and  then  an  order  rang 
out.  The  police,  drawing  their  batons,  began  to  advance 
on  the  Volunteers.  Some  seemed  to  be  hanging  back,  but 
the  great  majority,  after  a  moment's  hesitation,  came  on  with 
a  rush. 

Brohoon  gave  a  shout.  Bernard  gripped  his  rifle  and 
swung  it  clubwise  over  his  head.  The  foremost  Volunteers 
lined  up  to  meet  the  shock,  and  the  next  few  minutes  were  a 
confused  melee.  A  few  stray  revolver  shots  were  fired  and 
there  was  the  sound  of  blows  and  the  clatter  of  baton  on 
rifle.  Police  and  Volunteers  became  inextricably  mixed  up, 
and  Bernard  found  his  heavy  rifle  a  crushing  though  rather 
unmanageable  weapon.  The  dense  mass  of  Volunteers  in 
rear,  pressing  forward,  drove  the  comparatively  few  com- 
batants down  towards  the  line  of  bayonets.  Brohoon,  who 
at  the  outset  had  been  stupefied  by  what  was  happening, 
now  lost  his  head  completely  and  rushed  about  raging  hyster- 
ically and  shouting  abuse  at  the  soldiers.  One  of  these, 


330  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

getting  irritated,  made  a  pass  at  him  with  his  bayonet  and 
wounded  him  slightly,  and  about  the  same  moment  the 
police  withdrew  from  the  fray. 

"  It's  all  up,  boys.  Give  up  the  guns!  "  cried  Brohoon, 
and  collapsed  into  Bernard's  arms.  Bernard  lowered  him 
to  the  ground  and  opened  his  shirt,  but  found  nothing  but 
a  rather  deep  scratch.  Dropping  Brohoon's  head  with  a 
good  bump  on  the  road,  he  went  to  the  help  of  other  suf- 
ferers who,  now  that  the  scrimmage  was  over,  were  sitting 
or  standing  about  bandaging  their  hurts  with  the  help  of  the 
first-aid  sections.  Fortunately,  there  were  no  serious  cases. 

Matters  now  seemed  to  have  reached  a  deadlock,  but  the 
situation  was  saved  by  Umpleby.  Approaching  the  Com- 
missioner of  Police  he  imperiously  demanded  that  he  should 
withdraw  his  forces. 

"  Not  till  you  hand  over  those  rifles,"  replied  the  Com- 
missioner, stoutly. 

"  Now,  look  here,"  said  Umpleby.  "  Let's  thrash  this 
matter  right  out  from  the  beginning.  Diarmuid  and 
Devorgilla  ..." 

"  Diarmid  and  what's-her-name  be  damned !  I  want 
those  rifles." 

"  All  in  good  time,"  replied  Umpleby,  suavely.  "  Mean- 
while, we  must  thrash  out  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  affair 
from  beginning  to  end.  Diarmuid  and  Devorgilla,  I 
say  ...  " 

"  Look  here.  I've  no  time  for  any  nonsense  of  this  sort," 
said  the  officer,  angrily. 

"  I  insist  on  your  hearing  me,"  answered  Umpleby. 
"  Nothing  can  be  done  satisfactorily  without  a  clear  knowl- 
edge of  the  facts  and  theories  governing  the  case.  Diarmuid 
and  Devorgilla,  I  repeat,  by  their  lax  morality  [not  that  I 
am  a  puritan  by  any  means,  though  indeed  I  have  a  sincere 
respect  for  puritanism  in  moderation  (for  instance  I  approve 
of  Rabelais  though  I  cannot  say  the  same  for  Ghosts)  but  I 
disapprove  of  open  adultery  (especially  when  attended  by  dis- 
astrous sequels  as  in  the  case  of  Helen  of  Troy  and  this  same 


GUNS  33i 

Devorgilla)]  Diarmuid  and  Devorgilla,  I  resume,  are  at  the 
root  of  this  whole  affair.  Henry  the  Second's  claim  to  Ire- 
land, resting  as  it  did  upon  the  immorality  of  the  said 
Diarmuid  and  Devorgilla  ..." 

The  Commissioner  of  Police  tilted  his  cap  over  his  eyes 
and  scratched  the  back  of  his  head.  He  was  stupefied  by 
the  torrent  of  Umpleby's  language. 

"  Just  a  minute,"  he  began,  feebly,  but  Umpleby  put  up 
his  hand. 

"  Allow  me,"  he  said.  "  If  you  interrupt,  I  shall  have  to 
begin  all  over  again." 

This  prospect  so  alarmed  the  unfortunate  policeman  that 
he  held  his  peace. 

"Diarmuid  and  Devorgilla,"  resumed  Umpleby  —  but 
we  shall  leave  him  to  his  task  of  holding  the  enemy's  atten- 
tion and  return  to  the  Volunteers. 

As  soon  as  it  was  observed  that  the  Commissioner  of 
Police  was  completely  occupied  with  Umpleby  the  Volunteer 
officers  ordered  their  men  to  disperse.  Abandoning  their 
formation  accordingly,  the  latter  began  to  leave  the  road 
and  make  their  way  across  the  fields  and  private  demesnes  in 
the  direction  of  the  city,  so  that  when,  during  a  pause  in 
Umpleby's  eloquence,  the  Commissioner  of  Police  looked  up 
he  found  that  the  strategical  and  moral  questions  involved 
had  been  settled  by  the  disappearance  of  his  opponents  from 
the  field  of  operations.  He  turned  angrily  on  Umpleby  and 
said: 

"  Well,  I  think,  Mr.  Umpleby,  you've  played  me  a  very 
dirty  trick." 

"  Not  half  so  dirty  as  the  trick  Diarmuid  played  on 
O'Ruarc,"  retorted  Umpleby. 

The  Battle  of  Clontarf  was  over.  An  hour  later  the 
solemn  Swathythe  admitted  a  dusty,  tattered  master  to  the 
trim  flat  in  Harcourt  Street. 


332  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

8 

"  That's  an  excellent  soufflee,  Swathythe,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  Swathythe. 

"  You  might  run  out  and  buy  me  that  stop-press  they're 
calling,  Swathythe.  It'll  contain  an  account  of  my  exploits." 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  Swathythe  and  silently  evaporated. 

Bernard  reflected  what  an  excellent  servant  Swathythe 
was.  Here  was  he,  Bernard,  obscure  and  not  very  rich, 
after  journeying  a  thousand  miles,  perfumed  and  dinner- 
jacketed,  eating  the  very  soufflee  he  had  ordered  a  month 
ago  .  .  .  without  doubt  an  excellent  soufflee.  How  im- 
perturbable Swathythe  was.  He  had  made  no  comment 
whatever  on  his  master's  strange  return,  but  had  respectfully 
relieved  him  of  the  battered  rifle  as  if  it  had  been  a  walking- 
stick,  placed  it  in  the  umbrella  stand,  and  said :  "  Dinner 
will  be  ready  in  half-an-hour,  sir,"  just  as  if  Bernard  had 
been  out  for  a  short  stroll  And  the  dinner  had  been  perfect : 
the  soufflee  was  not  alone  in  its  excellence.  .  .  .  Luxuriously 
he  revelled  in  the  pleasure  of  being  home  again. 

Swathythe  returned  and  served  coffee  and  the  paper, 
lighted  Bernard's  cigar,  and  vanished.  Bernard  opened  the 
paper  and  in  an  instant  had  read  the  terrible  news  of 
Bachelor's  Walk:  how  the  soldiers  from  Clontarf  on  their 
return  to  Dublin  had  been  jeered  and  taunted  by  the  crowd, 
and  had  finally  turned  and  fired  a  volley  that  killed  four 
and  wounded  forty  people  .  .  . 

And  then  he  came  upon  a  letter  to  the  editor,  in  which 
Mr.  Cyril  Umpleby,  bubbling  with  modesty,  and  slashed 
with  parentheses,  told  how,  "  ably  assisted  by  Messrs. 
O'Flaherty  and  Lascelles,"  he  had  conducted  the  Howth 
run-gunning. 

"  The  impudent  little  beast,"  said  Bernard  to  himself. 
Then  he  turned  to  Swathythe  who  had  come  in  to  clear  the 
table. 

"  Would  you  remove  an  enemy  from  my  path,  Swa- 
thythe ?  "  he  asked. 

"  In  what  way,  sir?  " 


GUNS  333 

"  O,  by  the  dagger  or  by  poison.     I  care  not." 
"  No,  sir,"  said  Swathythe  without  a  smile. 
"Then   you   aren't   quite   such    a   perfect  servant   as   I 
thought,   Swathythe.  .  .  .  However,   that  soufflee  was  ex- 
cellent." 


CHAPTER  XIII 

WAR 


THEN  began  that  slaughter  of  the  world's  sons  which 
is  called  the  Great  European  War.  It  was  a  com- 
monplace at  the  time,  but  none  the  less  true,  to  call  it  a 
war  without  parallel.  Never  before  had  the  horrors  and 
sufferings  of  war  been  so  tremendous ;  never  before  had  they 
been  faced  with  such  daring  and  self-sacrifice.  Never  be- 
fore had  common  men  gone  to  war  with  nobler  purpose  in 
their  hearts ;  never  before  had  politicians  and  journalists  lied 
so  meanly  and  so  detestably.  Never  before  had  financiers 
so  callously  raked  in  their  blood-bought  gains;  never  before 
had  those  gains  been  so  stupendous.  On  the  plains  of  Flan- 
ders and  Northern  France,  among  the  wilds  of  the  Car- 
pathian Mountains,  and  in  the  marshes  of  the  Russo-German 
border  the  common  men  of  Europe  slaughtered  each  other 
at  the  bidding  of  their  masters  and  died  gloriously  for  a  lie. 
For  this  orgy  of  destruction  the  nations  organized  them- 
selves as  they  had  never  organized  for  any  good  or  useful 
purpose.  Personal  liberty,  a  delicate  regard  for  which  had 
been  so  prominent  in  all  opposition  to  mere  Social  reform, 
was  cast  aside,  held  as  nought.  Everywhere  person  and 
property  were  ruthlessly  commandeered  by  the  state.  And 
not  only  the  liberty  of  the  body,  but  the  liberty  of  the  mind 
was  assailed.  Freedom  of  the  press,  freedom  of  speech,  cher- 
ished fruits  of  bygone  struggles,  vanished  of  a  sudden,  and 
none  were  found  to  protest.  National  resourced  in  blood 
and  wealth  were  drawn  upon  without  stint.  The  reserves 
of  the  past  were  exhausted  in  an  instant ;  the  supplies  of  the 
future  were  mortgaged  lavishly,  recklessly.  The  flower  of 
334 


WAR  335 

the  world's  youth,  the  source  potential  of  the  coming  gen- 
erations, the  life  blood  of  mankind,  was  poured  in  an  ever- 
swelling  stream  into  the  insatiable  gulf  of  destruction.  Gay 
and  gallant  and  clean-minded  young  men:  honest  and  unsus- 
pecting souls:  they  went  forth  from  the  peace  and  comfort 
of  their  homes,  with  a  smile  on  their  lips  and  love  in  their 
hearts  —  Frenchmen,  Germans,  Russians,  English,  Belgians, 
Serbs ;  smaller  races  innumerable  —  to  face  hardship  and  toil 
and  sleeplessness  and  disease  and  danger;  torture  of  the 
senses;  wounds  most  horrible;  mutilations  unspeakable; 
death  in  a  thousand  ghastly  forms.  Kindly,  quiet,  gentle 
boys  many  of  them ;  mothers'  sons ;  they  left  the  women  they 
had  kissed  and  embraced  to  slay  and  be  slain.  They  slew 
each  other  from  a  distance  with  shell  and  ball;  they  dis- 
embowelled each  other  with  the  bayonet ;  they  poisoned  each 
other  with  gases;  they  rent  each  other  asunder  with  ex- 
plosives; in  desperate  combats  in  the  night  they  stabbed  and 
battered  each  other  to  death.  And  there  were  other  and 
fearfuller  deaths  than  these:  drowning  like  rats  trapped  in 
submarines ;  living  burials  in  mines ;  sickening  falls  from 
great  heights ;  burnings.  .  .  .  All  these  things  and  more  men 
faced  because  they  were  told  —  and  believed.  In  the  blas- 
phemed name  of  patriotism  the  German  student  was  taken 
from  his  studies  and  told  that  Shakespeare's  countrymen 
were  his  foes;  the  French  workingman  was  taken  from  his 
labour  and  told  that  the  country  of  those  whose  cry  for 
universal  emancipation  and  brotherhood  still  sounded  in  his 
ears  desired  nothing  but  his  enslavement;  the  dull  English 
yokel  at  his  plough  was  told  that  civilization  was  in  need  of 
his  aid ;  and  the  simple  Russian  moujik  was  herded  to  slaugh- 
ter he  knew  not  why.  All  over  Europe  boys  of  eighteen 
and  twenty,  their  generous  emotions  roused,  were  called  to 
the  defence  of  treaties  and  the  fulfilment  of  obligations  which 
the  cynical  politicians  who  summoned  them  would  have  been 
the  first  to  repudiate  should  their  interests  so  require:  and  all 
over  Europe  youth,  ingenuous,  trusting  and  obedient,  an- 
swered the  call.  But  to  these  simple  virtues  alone  the  mas- 


336  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

ters  of  men  could  not  trust.  More  was  needed.  During 
the  long  peace  men  had  forgotten  how  to  hate.  The  nations 
had  grown  interdependent :  you  cannot  hate  those  with  whom 
you  buy  and  sell,  or  those  with  whom  you  share  pleasures 
and  interests:  trade  and  the  arts  had  united  mankind. 
These  ties  must  now  be  broken,  so  by  tales  of  atrocities, 
by  lies  and  misrepresentations,  hate  was  deliberately  remanu- 
factured  and  righteous  anger  raised  on  all  sides  by  slander 
and  false  accusations. 

Until  the  storm  had  actually  burst  few  among  the  masses 
of  Europe  realized  what  was  happening.  All  through  those 
sunny  July  days,  while  the  diplomatists  wrangled,  the  ordi- 
nary man  went  about  his  ordinary  business,  prepared  for  his 
holiday  in  August,  and  wondered  how  long  the  present  spell 
of  glorious  weather  would  last.  In  Ireland  people's  minds 
were  too  much  occupied  with  the  course  of  events  at  home 
—  with  the  Howth  and  Kilcool  gun-runnings  and  the  Bache- 
lor's Walk  atrocity  —  to  notice  any  signs  of  the  impending 
disaster,  and  even  when,  two  days  after  these  occurrences, 
Austria-Hungary  declared  war  on  Servia  (as  we  then  called 
her)  not  many  realized  the  inevitable  sequel. 

"Can't  you  see,  mother?"  said  Bernard.  "Russia's 
bound  to  defend  Servia;  that  brings  in  Germany  to  back  up 
Austria;  France  must  then  come  to  help  Russia,  and  that 
brings  England  in,  too." 

Lady  Lascelles  was  incapable  of  following  a  chain  of 
reasons. 

"  I  can't  believe  it,"  she  said  .  .  . 

And  then  event  followed  event  with  surprising  rapidity. 
Germany  declared  war  almost  simultaneously  on  Russia  and 
France.  Belgium  was  invaded,  and  the  British  Govern- 
ment having  found  the  righteous  excuse  wherewith  to  delude 
the  people  of  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland,  plunged  into 
the  fray.  .  .  .  There  was  a  rushing  about  in  the  streets  of 
great  cities;  and  a  shouting  and  a  bustle  on  the  bourses; 
and  a  buying  of  stop-press  editions,  and  panic  and  chatter 
everywhere.  People  stood  about  at  street  corners  in  ani- 


WAR  337 

mated  discussion  of  what  they  could  not  understand. 
Chance  acquaintances  stopped  you  to  say:  "Awful  business 
this!  Isn't  it?"  And  you  answered:  "Yes,  awful!"  .  .  . 
Wild  rumours  were  circulated  and  implicity  believed. 
There  were  accounts  of  great  naval  battles,  with  convinc- 
ingly detailed  lists  of  losses.  Wiseacres  darkly  hinted  that 
Paris  had  already  fallen  and  the  Government  daren't  ad- 
mit it  ... 

"  Where  do  we  come  in?  "  asked  some. 

Before  the  days  of  madness  were  the  days  of  ignorance 
when  men  waited  to  be  told  what  they  were  going  to  fight 
for. 

2 

But  while  all  Europe  in  those  first  fatal  weeks  went  mad ; 
while  ordinary  men  raved  like  lunatics,  and  philosophers 
and  thinkers  babbled  like  angry  children;  while  the  wise 
equally  with  the  foolish  believed  all  they  were  told  and 
hearkened  to  every  rumour;  in  an  obscure  island  in  the 
western  sea  one  little  band  of  men  remained  calm  and 
serene,  unmoved  by  the  passions  of  the  war,  undeceived  by 
its  lies.  Stephen  Ward  with  his  keen  unemotional  insight; 
Bernard  with  his  free  comprehensive  grasp  of  essentials; 
O'Dwyer  with  his  hard  piercing  logic;  Hektor  with  his 
downright  common  sense;  McGurk  with  his  bluff  humorous 
honesty;  Crowley  with  his  lucid  wit,  even  Moore  with  his 
morose  cynicism:  all  saw  through  the  mist  of  deceit  and 
credulous  passion  down  to  the  naked  and  repulsive  reality 
below.  The  profession  of  the  Allies  that  they  were  fighting 
for  Christianity  and  civilization,  truth  and  justice  and  the 
sanctity  of  treaties,  the  freedom  of  small  nationalities  and  all 
the  rest  of  it  left  them  quite  cold.  Stephen  knew  how  small 
a  part  truth  and  justice  played  in  the  councils  of  the  world; 
Bernard  saw  no  world-vision  in  Imperial  England  and  Rus- 
sia and  Chauvinist  France ;  O'Dwyer  knew  England's  record 
in  the  matter  of  treaties  only  too  well ;  Hektor  was  too  well 
versed  in  the  tricks  of  European  diplomacy;  all  felt  that  the 
spectacle  of  the  oppressor  of  Ireland  coming  forth  as  the 


338  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

champion  of  small  nationalities  was,  to  say  the  least  of  it, 
humorous. 

"  The  whole  position's  absurd  on  the  face  of  it,"  said 
Crowley.  "  The  Czar  of  All  the  Russias  and  Hetman  of 
the  Don  Cossacks  righting  for  democracy  and  civilization! 
France  fighting  against  militarism !  The  Harlot  of  the  Na- 
tions fighting  for  Christianity  and  Justice!  It  couldn't  take 
a  baby  in." 

"  The  world's  been  taken  in  for  all  that,"  Bernard  pointed 
out. 

"  The  British  Empire  against  world  domination,"  ex- 
claimed O'Dwyer.  "  Men  must  be  a  pack  of  fools." 

"  So  I  have  ventured  on  previous  occasions  to  remark," 
said  Moore.  It  was  felt  distinctly  that  Moore  had  scored 
a  point  off  the  idealists. 

"  Well,  Hell  roast  John  Redmond  anyhow,"  said 
McGurk. 

Redmond's  famous  declaration  of  the  unconditional  adher- 
ence of  Ireland  to  the  British  and  Allied  cause  was  already 
two  days  old  on  the  occasion  of  this  conversation. 

"  The  question  is,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  is  he  a  knave  or  a 
fool?  Could  a  man  who's  been  as  long  in  politics  as  John 
Redmond  be  such  a  fool  as  to  take  European  diplomacy  at 
its  face  value?  " 

"  What  I  want  to  know,"  said  Crowley,  "  is:  has  he  got 
so  completely  West  Britonized  as  to  forget  that  an  English- 
man is  most  to  be  feared  when  he's  friendly." 

"  But  the  opportunity  he's  thrown  away!  "  groaned  Hek- 
tor.  "  My  God,  he  could  have  had  Repeal  of  the  Union 
for  the  asking.  He  could  have  held  back  every  reservist  in 
Ireland  till  he'd  got  it  in  force." 

"  We  could  have  had  Repeal  working  in  a  week  and  cut 
the  cable  at  the  first  British  defeat,"  said  McGurk. 

"  And  the  opportunity's  gone  for  ever,"  said  Crowley. 
"  Half  the  reservists  are  in  England  by  this  time." 

"The  question  is:  how  will  the  country  take  it?"  said 
O'Dwyer. 


WAR  339 

"  Repudiate  it !  "  said  Bernard,  promptly. 

"  I  doubt  it,"  said  Crowley.  "  They've  shown  no  signs 
of  it  yet,  anyway." 

"  The  Volunteers  will  repudiate  it,"  said  Hektor. 

"  They  might,"  said  McGurk.  "  But  sure  they're  young 
and  they  haven't  votes  most  o'  them." 

"  I'll  tell  you  how  the  country'll  take  it,"  said  Stephen. 
"  Volunteers  and  all,"  he  added. 

"  How?  "  asked  several. 

"  Lying  down,"  said  Stephen. 

Bernard,  full  of  the  zeal  of  the  convert,  refused  to  believe 
this. 

"  You'll  see  I'm  right,"  said  Stephen,  in  his  quiet,  dog- 
matic way.  "  They're  not  ripe  for  bold  action  yet.  Ire- 
land's history  has  left  her  incapable  of  sound  political  think- 
ing, so  she'll  just  do  what  she's  told.  Perhaps  things  would 
have  been  different  if  the  Volunteer  movement  was  a  year  or 
two  older,  but  as  it  is  ...  "  He  shrugged  his  shoulders. 
Every  one  was  unwillingly  convinced  that  he  was  right. 

"  England's  always  had  all  the  luck,"  said  O'Dwyer. 
"Oh,  for  a  Parnell!" 

"  Or  a  Carson,"  said  McGurk. 

It  was  the  war  and  the  anticipation  of  exciting  possibilities 
that  had  brought  our  friends  to  the  capital  in  August. 
Moore  had  returned  hurriedly  from  holidays  in  France. 
Crowley  had  rushed  up  from  Ballylangan  in  Ossory  where 
he  was  now  dispensary  doctor.  O'Dwyer  had  left  his  family 
down  in  Greystones.  He  was  not  yet  qualified,  nor  was 
McGurk.  The  latter,  indeed,  showed  signs  of  development 
into  a  "  chronic  "  for  he  was  due  for  his  third  attempt  at  his 
Third  Examination  in  September.  Bernard's  flat  was  the 
scene  of  their  assembly. 

Events  justified  Stephen's  prophecy.  At  first,  indeed, 
Ireland  was  a  little  taken  aback  by  the  new  departure. 
"  That  was  a  queer  speech  of  Redmond's,"  was  the  general 
comment  heard  in  trams  and  trains  and  public  places 
generally.  Mr.  Redmond's  step  was  unprecedented  in  the 


340  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

annals  of  nationalism.  The  majority  of  even  the  most 
orthodox  Home  Rulers  were  at  bottom'  only  Home  Rulers 
faute-de-mieux  and  regarded  England  as  an  enemy  who, 
being  too  strong  to  be  fought,  had  to  be  cajoled;  and  the 
traditional  attitude  of  Ireland  towards  England's  wars  had 
always  been  one  of  hope  for  her  defeat.  Various,  therefore, 
were  the  explanations  put  forward  for  the  present  policy. 
Some  considered  it  mere  bluff.  "  Redmond's  codding  the 
English  so  as  to  make  sure  of  Home  Rule,"  they  said. 
Others  opined  that  he  was  genuinely  convinced  that  a  Ger- 
man victory  would  merely  mean  a  change  of  masters  for 
Ireland,  and  acted  on  the  principle  that  "  the  devil  you 
know  is  better  than  the  devil  you  don't  know." 

"  But  anyone  is  likely  to  be  an  improvement  on  the  person 
you  know  to  be  a  devil,"  Bernard  used  to  suggest  to  these, 
but  without  effect. 

Few  people  then  had  sufficient  political  imagination  and 
knowledge  to  see  that  it  might  be  to  Germany's  interest  to 
create  a  free  and  friendly  Ireland:  indeed,  a  free  Ireland 
seemed  to  be  beyond  the  purview  of  a  generation  suckled 
on  constitutionalism  and  accustomed  to  having  its  thinking 
done  for  it.  Very  few  also  realized  the  completeness  of 
Mr.  Redmond's  surrender.  They  did  not  see  the  insult  im- 
plied in  Sir  Edward  Grey's  "  One  Bright  Spot "  oration. 
Ireland  was  not  a  consideration  that  would  have  to  be  taken 
into  account,  said  Sir  Edward,  and  Mr.  Redmond  had 
crawled  gratefully  to  pick  up  the  bone  thus  contemptuously 
flung  at  him,  and  found  it  marrowless. 

"  The  slaves  are  content  with  their  fetters  and  will  fight 
loyally  for  their  masters  like  the  good  little  slaves  they  are." 
This  was  Crowley's  paraphrase  of  Redmond's  speech.  The 
papers,  however,  both  Irish  and  English,  called  the  thing  a 
"  Statesmanlike  declaration,"  a  phrase  bestowed  hencefor- 
ward almost  automatically  on  each  successive  gracefully- 
worded  surrender. 

And  the  Irish  people,  as  Stephen  had  prophesied,  took  it 
all  lying  down.  Obedience  to  the  Party  had  become  a  habit, 


WAR  341 

yet  it  took  some  time  before  people  got  completely  accus- 
tomed to  the  new  "  Union  of  Hearts "  as  it  was  called. 
Their  "  loyalty,"  like  a  strange  garment,  clove  not  to  its 
mould,  needing  the  aid  of  use.  This  showed  itself  specially 
in  the  Volunteers,  many  of  whose  companies  were  presented 
with  Union  Jacks  by  enthusiastic  Unionist  ladies.  This 
was  felt  to  be  rather  too  much.  Home  Rule  was  on  the 
Statute  Book  all  right,  and  there  was  peace  between  the 
nations,  but  flags  are  thicker  than  paper  and  Irishmen  could 
not  learn  to  love  the  symbol  of  their  slavery  in  a  day.  So 
the  flag  of  the  Empire  was  generally  accepted  bashfully,  and 
as  soon  as  the  innate  politeness  of  the  people  allowed,  rele- 
gated to  the  dust  bin. 

But  the  new  way  of  thinking  began  to  take  root.  Re- 
servists, going  to  join  their  units,  were  feted  and  escorted  to 
the  railway  stations  by  the  town  and  village  bands.  Young 
men  flocked  into  the  army.  Soldiers  were  no  longer  looked 
upon  as  janissaries  and  alien  conquerors;  while  the  stern 
spirits  who  distrusted  England  and  refused  to  acquiesce  in 
the  new  regime  were  regarded  as  unforgiving,  mean-spirited 
cranks.  The  Nationalists  of  the  middle  and  upper  classes 
were  of  course  the  first  to  adapt  themselves  to  circumstances. 
They  were  in  fact  very  much  pleased  with  the  whole  course 
of  events.  The  last  remaining  taint  of  "  lawlessness  "  had 
now  been  removed  from  their  party,  and  such  of  them  (never 
very  many)  who  adhered  to  the  principle  of  remaining 
seated  for  the  playing  of  God  Save  the  King  were  relieved  of 
that  unpleasant  necessity. 

Bernard  did  not  realize  how  far  things  had  gone  until  one 
night  at  the  beginning  of  September  when  he  went  to  the 
Hippodrome  with  Geoffrey  Manders.  This  man  in  his 
bloodless,  muddled,  and  not  very  sincere  cosmopolitanism, 
professed  a  very  detached  point  of  view  both  towards  the 
war  of  controversy  in  Ireland  and  the  war  of  steel  in  Europe. 
His  interest  lay  in  watching  the  effects  of  these  things  on 
others  and  he  was  rather  amused  at  the  heat  and  excitement 
of  Bernard  —  the  Bernard  whose  development  he  had  quietly 


342  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

watched  from  the  days  when  he  had  held  views  very  similar 
to  his  own  (albeit  he  held  them  with  a  clarity,  a  sincerity 
and  a  passion  of  which  Manders  was  incapable)  down  to  his 
recent  emerging  as  a  "  hillside  "  Nationalist. 

The  program  that  evening  was  a  tiresome  one.  A  war- 
song  or  two  roused  little  enthusiasm.  A  conjurer  made  the 
audience  frankly  yawn.  Then  a  screen  was  lowered,  the 
house  was  darkened,  and  a  succession  of  war-pictures  was 
thrown  upon  the  screen.  The  audience  woke  up.  "  War 
Scenes  from  all  Fronts"  they  read.  A  Belgian  cavalry 
patrol  cantering  across  the  screen  was  warmly  applauded, 
and  the  orchestra  played  the  Brabanqonne ,  but  nobody  rec- 
ognized it.  French  Troops  on  the  March  produced  even 
warmer  applause,  for  Irishmen,  with  memories  of  Ninety- 
Eight  in  their  hearts,  have  always  a  soft  spot  for  France; 
and  as  the  first  familiar  bars  of  the  Marseillaise  sounded 
from  the  orchestra  the  song  was  taken  up  lustily  in  all  parts 
of  the  house.  Bernard's  pulse  could  not  help  responding  to 
the  old  song  of  the  Revolution  and  he  felt  bitterly  the  hard 
stroke  of  fate  in  placing  him  amid  the  ranks  opposed  to  it. 
There  was  a  perceptible  slackening  in  the  popular  enthusiasm 
when  a  view  of  Russian  soldiers  resting  on  the  march  was 
flashed  forth,  and  Bernard  wondered  what  was  happening 
in  Poland  and  Finland.  How  would  they  take  the  war? 
There  would  be  less  hypocrisy  used  with  them  anyway,  he 
reflected.  They  might  even  be  dragooned  into  quiescence: 
a  more  honourable  fate  than  Ireland's.  .  .  .  And  then  came 
the  climax:  British  troops  landing  in  France,  said  the 
screen,  and  as  the  bustling  scene  was  revealed,  cheer  after 
cheer  went  up  from  the  auditorium. 

"  This  is  great !  "  chuckled  Manders  in  much  amusement. 
..."  I  wonder  will  they  try  them  with  God  save  the 
King" 

The  picture  flickered  along,  and  no  sign  of  the  anthem. 

"  They  don't  like  to  risk  it,"  said  Manders. 

"  It'd  make  the  worms  turn,"  said  the  disgusted  Bernard. 

But  a  moment  later  the  slow  solemn  anthem  rolled  forth, 


WAR  343 

and  Bernard  was  the  only  member  of  that  vast  audience  who 
did  not  spring  to  his  feet  and  burst  into  song. 

"  Fickle,  fickle  people,"  he  said  to  himself. 

When  it  was  all  over  Manders  lay  back  in  his  chair  laugh- 
ing loudly;  a  jarring  blatant  laugh  for  which  Bernard  never 
forgave  him  .  .  . 

The  Southern  Unionists  professed  themselves  delighted  at 
the  Nationalist  volte-face.  Their  young  men  flocked  into 
the  Volunteers  whom  they  now  regarded  almost  as  a  part  of 
the  forces  of  the  Crown,  and  their  newspapers  glowed  with 
admiration  for  Mr.  Redmond's  statesmanship.  "  At  last  we 
see  what  we  have  long  wished  to  see,"  quoth  the  Irish  Times. 
11  Ireland  a  Nation,  brave,  united,  and  in  arms."  Strange 
words  from  a  paper  whose  policy  was  based  on  the  denial  of 
Ireland's  nationhood,  bravery,  unity,  and  right  to  arm. 
For  acting  up  to  the  ideal  there  mouthed  so  hypocritically 
Robert  Emmet  had  been  hanged.  The  Ulstermen  were 
more  honest,  and  changed  not  their  attitude  to  the  rest  of 
their  countrymen  one  iota.  They  vowed  that  when  the 
war  was  over  they  would  send  Home  Rule  to  the  devil;  and 
their  reservists  marched  to  the  stations  to  the  tunes  of 
Boyne  Water  and  Kick  the  Pope. 

The  fruit  of  Mr.  Redmond's  statesmanship,  the  return 
for  all  this  surrender  of  principle  and  tradition  and  national 
advantage,  was  the  passing  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  followed 
immediately  by  a  Suspensory  Bill,  postponing  it  until  it 
should  be  modified  as  to  be  acceptable  to  the  Orangemen, 
or,  as  McGurk  said,  till  Tibb's  Eve:  and  at  the  very  moment 
that  Mr.  Redmond  was  foisting  this  "  Treaty  of  Peace  " 
and  "  Charter  of  Liberty  "  upon  his  countrymen's  accept- 
ance, the  English  Tories  were  denouncing  the  passage  of  the 
bill  as  treachery  and  openly  promising  to  tear  the  "  Charter  " 
in  pieces,  while  the  Orangemen  no  less  openly  promised  to 
put  the  "  Treaty  of  Peace  "  in  the  fire.  In  a  manifesto  to 
the  Irish  people,  Mr.  Redmond  announced  the  opening  of  a 
new  era.  The  Democracy  of  Britain,  he  said,  had  kept  faith 
with  Ireland:  it  was  now  a  duty  of  honour  for  Ireland  to 


344  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

keep  faith  with  them.  In  other  words,  in  return  for  a 
promise  by  an  English  party  Government  to  restore  (at  some 
date  unspecified)  a  tithe  of  her  rights,  and  in  spite  of  her 
experience  of  British  promises  in  the  past,  Ireland  was  to 
give  herself  body  and  soul  to  assist  her  ancient  enemy  against 
a  nation  from  whom  she  had  never  suffered  wrong  of  any 
kind. 

And  Ireland,  generous,  sentimental,  credulous  Ireland, 
only  too  ready  to  forgive  and  forget,  hastened  at  his  bidding 
"  to  keep  faith."  And  how  did  England  receive  it?  Need- 
less to  say,  England  would  not  admit  that  Ireland  had  any- 
thing to  forgive,  but  in  her  condescending  way  she  decided 
that  Ireland  had  come  to  beg  forgiveness  and  atone  for  past 
rebellions  by  present  loyalty.  And  in  that  spirit  the  bulk  of 
the  English  people  accepted  the  whole  Irish  situation  as  a 
matter  of  course.  Official  England  heaved  a  sigh  of  relief 
at  the  trouble  it  had  been  saved. 

"  They've  forgiving  us  for  all  the  wrong  they've  done  us," 
said  Crowley. 

"  Where  is  it  all  going  to  end?  "  Bernard  asked  Stephen. 

"  Goodness  knows,"  said  Stephen.  "  I  confess  the  work- 
ings of  the  Parliamentarian  mind  are  beyond  me.  .  .  .  Of 
course,  so  long  as  Redmond  speaks  for  his  party  and  they 
accept  him,  we've  no  right  to  complain,  not  being  Parlia- 
mentarians. But  if  he  goes  on  pretending  he  speaks  for  the 
Volunteers,  he's  got  to  be  stopped.  There's  nothing  about 
Imperial  Thinking  in  our  constitution  and  Redmond's  got 
to  realize  it.  He  can  do  what  he  likes  with  his  own  party, 
but  hands  off  the  Volunteers." 

"  That'll  mean  a  split,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Not  necessarily,"  said  Stephen.  "  Not  if  Redmond 
leaves  the  Volunteers  alone.  But  if  he  insists  on  a  split, 
he'll  have  it.  Disunion  is  the  devil,  but  there's  one  thing 
worse,  and  that  is  —  acting  a  lie." 


WAR  345 

3 

Meanwhile,  in  a  seemingly  irresistible  rush,  the  German 
armies  poured  into  Belgium  and  France,  and  the  great 
slaughter  began. 

Bernard  and  his  friends  regarded  the  war  in  totally  dif- 
ferent lights.  Bernard  had  come  to  Nationalism  as  part  of 
a  general  revolutionary  and  Internationalist  creed,  whereas 
his  friends  were  Nationalists  first  and  such  Internationalism 
as  any  of  them  possessed  was  but  an  expansion  of  their  Na- 
tionalism. To  Bernard,  therefore,  the  war  was  evil  un- 
mitigated, whilst  to  the  others  the  evil  was  considerably 
modified  by  the  hope  of  freedom  it  gave  to  Ireland. 

Bernard,  however,  was  not  a  mere  pacifist:  he  was  per- 
fectly ready  to  shed  his  own  and  any  one  else's  blood  in  a 
good  cause :  but  he  hated  to  see  human  life  and  achievement 
wasted  in  the  culmination  of  a  mere  game  of  capitalist 
diplomacy.  So  with  a  heart  full  of  anxiety  for  his  fellow- 
men  he  had  watched  all  the  manoeuvres  that  preceded  the 
outbreak.  Even  after  the  formal  ruptures  he  hoped  against 
hope  that  the  diplomatists  would  realize  the  horror  of  the 
game  they  were  playing  and  pull  up  before  it  was  too  late: 
a  perfectly  disinterested  hope,  for  he  felt  certain  at  the  time 
that  Ireland's  attitude  would  be  one  of  neutrality.  But 
with  the  first  news  of  bloodshed  these  hopes  vanished,  and 
as  the  sun  rose  on  the  second  day  of  hostilities  he  knew  that 
a  thousand  men  who  might  have  seen  that  dawn  were  dead. 
He  felt  it  as  a  personal  grief,  as  was  his  habit.  .  .  .  And 
then  all  Europe  was  ablaze  with  hatred.  He  saw  quiet  de- 
cent men  and  elderly  ladies  rejoicing  over  the  news  that  four 
thousand  German  corpses  had  been  counted  on  such-and- 
such  a  front:  he  saw  his  own  friends  rejoicing  over  similar 
heaps  of  British  corpses.  To  him  the  slaughter  gave  a 
sickening  sense  of  personal  loss:  every  death  was  a  separate 
tragedy:  and  every  man  cut  off  in  the  bloom  of  his  youth 
made  him  think  of  the  children  who  would  never  be  born. 
.  .  .  He  hoped  that  the  rulers,  the  organizers  of  slaughter, 
would  even  now  relent  when  they  realized  the  magnitude  of 


346  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

the  massacre;  would  shrink  from  piling  up  yet  more  and 
more  misery  on  the  shoulders  of  men.  But  no.  On  went 
the  appalling  butchery,  day  after  day,  week  after  week, 
month  after  month,  until  hope  died  away,  and  he  could  only 
look  on  helplessly  and  bemoan  the  pity  of  it. 

Very  different  were  the  views  of  the  others.  Hektor  was 
not  an  Internationalist  at  all:  in  a  free  Ireland  he  would 
have  been  inclined  toward  jingoism.  McGurk  was  much 
the  same:  he  was  no  politician  and  merely  wanted  Ireland 
free.  O'Dwyer  was  an  Internationalist  of  a  sort:  he  felt 
a  benevolent  neutrality  towards  all  nations  but  England, 
whom  he  hated  with  all  the  powers  of  his  soul;  not  merely 
British  Government  of  Ireland,  he  would  explain,  but  Eng- 
land herself,  the  English  people,  the  make  of  their  minds, 
their  methods  of  thought,  their  alleged  religion,  the  look  in 
their  eyes,  and  the  screeching  of  their  damned  voices.  To 
a  virile  hatred  like  this  partisanship  in  the  war  was  inevita- 
ble. And  as  for  Stephen,  the  ruthlessness  of  his  purpose  left 
no  room  for  vicarious  sympathies. 

All  these,  therefore,  watched  the  German  advance  with 
hope  and  feverish  impatience.  They  pictured  the  German 
army  as  a  great  relief  force  moving  nearer  and  nearer  to 
Ireland's  deliverance,  and  while  Hektor,  with  a  professional 
eye,  followed  events  on  a  large  scale  map  and  weighed  and 
discounted  reports,  McGurk  danced  in  jubilation  over  every 
fresh  town  occupied,  and  O'Dwyer  prayed  desperately  at 
every  check. 

On  came  the  grey  masses.  Liege  fell.  Namur,  it  was 
predicted,  would  hold  out  for  months.  Its  fall  was  reported 
the  next  morning.  Back  went  the  Belgian  army  fighting 
manfully  step  by  step.  Back  went  the  British:  slowly, 
stubbornly,  hitting  out  heavily,  but  still  going  back.  Back 
went  the  French;  grimly,  desperately  resisting;  taking  and 
giving  blood  for  every  inch  of  the  fatherland  surrendered : 
but  still  going  back. 

"  Germans  on  the  Road  to  Paris"  screamed  the  newspaper 
placards.  The  war  seemed  to  be  won.  O'Dwyer  was 


WAR  347 

exultant;  Hektor  was  calmly  confident,  full  of  soldierly 
admiration ;  even  Stephen  showed  himself  less  impassive  than 
usual. 

"  Paris  tomorrow,"  said  the  optimists,  but  tomorrow 
showed  no  startling  developments. 

"  Preparing  to  spring,"  said  the  optimists  to  console 
themselves. 

And  then  came  the  Marne  and  the  disheartening  days  of 
the  retreat.  The  hope  of  a  decisive  German  victory  was 
gone,  and  the  great  days  of  the  war  were  over.  Later,  in- 
deed, when  the  Germans  were  fighting  their  way,  step  by 
step,  toward  Calais,  hope  for  a  time  revived. 

"  When  they've  got  Calais,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  they'll 
plank  down  some  of  those  big  howitzers  of  theirs  and  hold 
up  the  Channel.  .  .  .  Dover  next.  Then's  our  chance." 

But  the  Germans  never  reached  Calais.  The  fighting  on 
the  Western  Front,  after  an  orgy  of  bloodshed,  ended  in 
stalemate  and  settled  down  to  the  dull  monotony  of  trench 
warfare,  and  the  young  strategists  turned  their  attention  to 
events  nearer  home. 

4 

"  I  suppose  I'll  be  losing  you  one  of  these  days,  Swa- 
thythe,"  said  Bernard. 

"  I  hope  not,  sir,"  said  Swathythe. 

"What?  Aren't  you  going  to  fight  for  your  King  and 
country,  Swathythe  ?  " 

"  King  and  country  never  did  nothing  for  me,  sir." 

"  I'm  afraid  you're  a  materialist,  Swathythe." 

"  No,  sir.     Primitive  Methodist,  sir." 

"  And  your  country's  call  means  nothing  to  you,  Swa- 
thythe? " 

"  Never  heard  it,  sir.     Shouldn't  recognize  it  if  I  did." 

"  Dear  me.  This  is  very  disappointing.  I  met  a  man 
down  town  this  morning  who  asked  me  what  I  was  doing  in 
the  great  war.  I  said  I  wasn't  doing  anything.  He  was 
very  shocked  and  said :  '  I'v e  given  my  son.'  Now  wouldn't 


348  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

it  have  been  nice  if  I'd  been  able  to  say:  '  I've  given  my 
valet '  ?  " 

"  Very  nice,  sir.     For  you." 

"  Exactly,  Swathythe.  That's  what  I  said  to  the  gentle- 
man in  question.  .  .'  .  By  the  way,  Swathythe,  you  might 
put  the  spare  room  in  order.  Mr.  O'Dwyer  is  coming  to 
stay  with  me  for  a  few  days." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  And  Mr.  Ward,  Mr.  O'Flaherty  and  Mr.  McGurk  are 
dining  here  tonight.  Mr.  Ward  may  be  late,  but  you  may 
serve  dinner  in  any  case  at  half-past  seven." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

Bernard  had  been  rung  up  that  morning  by  O'Dwyer, 
who  told  him  that  he  had  been  ordered  out  of  the  house  by 
his  father  on  refusing  to  take  a  commission  in  the  British 
Army,  and  requested  an  asylum  while  looking  for  lodgings. 
In  the  course  of  the  afternoon  O'Dwyer  arrived,  still  seeth- 
ing with  indignation,  not  only  against  his  own  father,  but 
against  paternity  in  general. 

"  New  definition  of  '  father,'  "  he  said.  "  An  insolent 
tyrant  who  thinks  he  owns  you  body  and  soul.  One  who, 
on  the  strength  of  having  begotten  you,  takes  credit  for  all 
your  virtues  and  repudiates  all  your  vices.  .  .  .  The  in- 
solence of  fathers  .  .  .  talking  about  '  giving  their 
sons '  .  .  .  " 

Bernard  remembered  the  father  he  had  met  that  morning. 

"  Tell  us  all  about  it,"  he  said. 

"  Oh,  we  had  ructions,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  We'd  only 
just  started  breakfast  when  the  Boss  let  me  have  it.  '  I 
met  Bonegraft  at  the  club  last  night,'  says  he,  '  and  he  told 
me  he'd  given  his  son  to  the  war.  I  was  wishing  I  could 
say  the  same,'  says  he.  '  In  fact,  I  was  quite  ashamed  of 
myself,'  says  he.  I  sat  tight  and  said  nothing.  Suddenly, 
he  raps  out:  'Why  don't  you  apply  for  a  commission?' 
'  You  know  my  politics,'  says  I.  '  Politcs  be  damned,'  says 
he.  '  It's  every  man's  duty  to  go  to  the  front.'  '  I  beg  to 
differ,'  says  I.  '  O,  do  you?'  says  he.  'Well,  differ  or 


WAR  349 

no,  you've  got  to  do  it,'  says  he.  '  No,  thank  you,'  says 
I.  '  Look  here,  my  lad,'  says  he,  flying  into  a  rage,  '  I've 
never  interfered  with  your  holding  what  principles  you  like, 
but  in  a  time  of  crisis  you've  got  to  obey  ME!'  (Fierce 
emphasis  on  the  ME,  Bernard.)  'There's  a  higher  power 
than  you,'  says  I,  diffidently.  '  None  of  your  cant,'  he  yells. 
"What?  Is  there  no  one  higher?'  says  I,  innocently,  and 
with  that  he  lets  a  screech  out  of  him,  and  '  Out  of  my  house 
you  go,'  says  he.  So  I  went  upstairs  and  packed  my  bag. 
Then  I  telephoned  to  you,  and  after  that  I  went  off  and  had 
a  farewell  lunch  with  the  mother  and  sisters  at  Jammets, 
.  .  .  and  here  I  am.  ...  I  composed  a  Limerick  about  it 
all,  by  the  way.  How  does  it  go  now? 

That  eminent  man  called   O'Dwyer 
Is  with  love  of  Old  England  on  fire 

Which   flame   sacrificial, 

Howe'er  he  may  wish,  I'll 
Not  swallow  the  son  of  the  sire. 

Not  bad  that,  eh?  I  composed  it  between  the  cheese  and 
the  coffee." 

"  This  damned  notion  of  patria  potestas !  "  exclaimed 
Bernard.  "  There's  too  much  of  it  in  this  country  —  in 
every  class.  When  I  see  the  way  the  farmers  slave-drive 
their  sons,  I  wonder  parricide  isn't  commoner.  And  these 
middle-class  despots!  ..." 

He  showed  his  guest  to  his  room,  and  asked  him  about  his 
prospects.  They  were  all  right,  it  appeared.  He  was  due 
for  his  Final  Examination  at  the  end  of  the  month  and  all 
his  fees  were  paid.  Moreover,  he  had  a  little  money,  some 
thirty  pounds  lying  in  a  savings  bank,  which  had  been  de- 
posited there  by  a  benevolent  god-parent  in  his  babyhood 
and  had  never  since  been  touched.  This,  eked  out  by  what 
his  pen  might  earn,  should  keep  him  until  he  was  qualified 
and  even  after.  He  could  borrow  then. 

"What  did  you  think  of  the  Woodenbridge  Oration?" 
asked  Bernard. 


350  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

This  was  the  topic  of  conversation  over  all  Ireland  that 
day.  On  the  previous  afternoon  Mr.  Redmond  had  turned 
up  at  a  Volunteer  parade  at  Woodenbridge,  Co.  Wicklow, 
and  told  the  Volunteers  that  whereas  this  was  a  war  in  de- 
fence of  the  "  highest  principles  of  religion  and  morality," 
it  was  the  duty  of  Irishmen  to  rush  at  once  to  the  fighting 
line. 

"  A  split  is  inevitable  now,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Redmond 
is  entitled  to  think  that  sort  of  flapdoodle  himself  if  he  likes. 
He  can  even  dish  it  out  to  the  U.I.L.  if  he  thinks  fit.  But 
he's  no  business  to  put  out  that  policy  from  a  Volunteer 
platform.  We're  a  non-party  organization,  formed  to  give 
Ireland  a  defence  force,  not  to  give  England  recruits.  .  .  . 
Redmond  and  his  party  will  just  have  to  clear  out  of  the 
force."  ' 

"  They're  the  majority,"  said  Bernard. 

"  No  matter.  They've  violated  the  constitution,  so  out 
they'll  have  to  go." 

They  went  out  for  a  stroll  down  Grafton  Street,  where 
Bernard  laid  in  a  supply  of  cigarettes  for  the  evening.  Then 
they  returned  to  await  the  arrival  of  the  guests.  McGurk 
was  the  first  to  arrive,  jovial  and  hungry,  and,  as  he  said, 
"  Kilt  with  work."  He  was  soon  followed  by  Hektor, 
heavy  with  bad  news  from  the  Aisne.  Stephen,  not  appear- 
ing when  dinner  was  announced,  Bernard  explained  that  he 
had  expected  to  be  late  as  there  was  a  session  of  the  Pro- 
visional Committee  to  consider  what  steps  were  to  be  taken 
in  view  of  the  Woodenbridge  speech. 

The  mere  mention  of  this  oration  produced  a  highly 
censorable  flow  of  language  from  McGurk,  and  Hektor  pro- 
nounced the  event  the  greatest  disaster  in  Irish  history  since 
the  Battle  of  the  Marne. 

Stephen  arrived  while  they  were  still  at  the  soup  and  was 
at  once  eagerly  questioned.  He  took  from  his  pocket  a  sheet 
of  paper  and  read  them  the  short  pointed  statement  drawn 
up  by  the  Provisional  Committee  and  sent  forth  that  eve- 


WAR  351 

ning  to  all  the  newspapers  in  the  country.  It  said,  in  brief, 
that  whereas,  Mr.  Reymond  and  his  nominees  had  pro- 
pounded for  the  Volunteers  a  policy  fundamentally  at  vari- 
ance with  their  own  professed  objects  and  constitution,  they 
had  ceased  to  hold  any  place  in  the  administration  of  the 
movement:  that  the  object  and  policy  of  the  Volunteers  still 
remained  the  same  as  on  the  day  of  its  foundation :  and  that 
Ireland  could  not  with  honour  or  safety  take  part  in  foreign 
quarrels  except  through  the  free  action  of  a  national  govern- 
ment of  her  own.  It  concluded  by  demanding  the  imme- 
diate establishment  of  that  National  Government. 

"And  what  about  Headquarters?"  asked  O'Flaherty, 
promptly. 

"  We've  an  armed  garrison  in  occupation  already,"  said 
Stephen. 

"  Good  for  you,"  said  Hektor.  "  Dublin  will  stick  to 
us  anyway." 

"  Dublin  stuck  to  Parnell,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  I  wonder 
how  will  the  country  go?  " 

"  To  pieces,"  said  Stephen.  "  We  expect  a  backing  in 
Kerry,  Athenry,  Cork,  and  perhaps  Wexford,  but  the  rest  of 
the  country  will  go  with  Redmond." 

"  Then,"  said  Bernard,  in  slow  realization,  "  we're  in  a 
hopeless  minority." 

"  Hopeless,"  said  Stephen.  "  About  ten  thousand  men 
against  the  whole  country." 

These  words  came  as  a  shock  to  Bernard.  He  had  been 
looking  forward  to  a  great  national  fight  for  liberty,  and  here 
he  found  himself  a  member  of  an  insignificant  faction. 

"  ,Not  only  that,"  said  Stephen,  "  but  we'll  have  to  go 
through  a  storm  of  abuse  and  misrepresentation  and  per- 
secution. Our  own  countrymen  will  denounce  us  and  the 
enemy  will  try  to  destroy  us." 

"  Begob !  "  said  McGurk,  "  we're  going  to  get  it  in  the 
neck.  You  take  it  from  me,  boys,  all  the  dirty  tongues  in 
the  Hibernians  and  the  U.I.L.  will  be  let  loose  on  us." 


352  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  We're  at  war  from  this  moment,"  said  Hektor.  "  Ire- 
land joins  the  Central  Powers.  Hostilities  will  commence 
at  once." 

"  Well,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  it's  a  relief.  The  compromis- 
ing of  the  last  few  days  was  getting  to  be  a  bore.  I  like  a 
clear  issue." 

The  prospect  of  what  was  before  them  seemed  to  brace 
his  friends,  but  it  had  a  depressing  effect  on  Bernard.  To 
have  to  oppose  the  will  of  the  country  he  had  so  lately 
learned  to  love  was  a  hard  trial  to  him.  He  had  none  of 
the  habit  of  hatred  and  opposition  to  England  which  buoyed 
up  the  determination  of  the  others.  They  knew  infallibly 
that,  however  Ireland  herself  might  be  led  into  wrong 
courses,  the  anti-English  attitude  was  the  only  safe  and 
patriotic  policy.  They  knew,  too,  that  it  was  the  only 
policy  to  which,  after  the  English  treachery  which  would 
inevitably  manifest  itself,  Ireland  must  eventually  return. 
But  Bernard  had  none  of  these  consolations.  He  foresaw 
no  change  in  the  situation.  Hatred  of  England  had  not 
been  ground  into  his  soul  by  circumstances,  and  love  of  Ire- 
land was  his  predominant  passion.  To  oppose  her  will, 
therefore,  was  a  very  painful  duty. 

But  the  others  were  quite  hilarious.  McGurk  was  al- 
ready looking  forward  to  the  reaction. 

"  They'll  be  sick  of  loyalty  in  a  month,"  he  said,  "  and 
they'll  be  clamouring  to  come  back  to  us.  '  I  told  you  so,' 
we'll  be  saying  to  them  and  we'll  just  give  them  a  toe  in  the 
rump  to  teach  them  sense  next  time." 

Hektor  was  less  optimistic. 

"  They  won't  come  back  as  quick  as  all  that,  Hugo,"  he 
said.  "  At  least,  not  unless  the  English  are  clumsier  fools 
than  I  think  them.  I  give  'em  two  years." 

"  Sure  the  war'll  be  over  by  then,"  said  McGurk. 

"  Not  on  your  life,"  said  Hektor.  "  The  Marne's  put  the 
kybosh  on  that." 

"  We're  at  war  with  the  Empire  .  .  .  our  little  crowd," 


WAR  353 

suddenly  interjected  O'Dwyer.     "  Ten  thousand  men  against 

—  God  knows  how  many  ..." 

The  prospect  of  a  struggle  against  odds  mightier  than 
Xenophon's  roused  Bernard  somewhat.  And  he  remembered 
his  duties  as  host. 

"  Hektor,  you  aren't  eating.  Another  slice  of  duck? 
.  .  .  Fill  up  Mr.  McGurk's  glass,  Swathythe.  .  .  . 
O'Dwyer,  that's  a  new  sauce  made  to  my  own  recipe,  sauce 
franc-tireure  irlandaise." 

"  That  was  a  nice  little  girl  I  saw  you  with  in  Grafton 
Street,  Bernard,  the  other  day,"  said  McGurk. 

"  I  don't  remember  her,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Galong  now !  She  was  a  neat  little  cailin  with  fair  hair 
and  brown  eyes." 

"  Oh,"  said  Bernard,  "  I  just  me  her  by  chance." 

"  Will  ye  listen  to  him,"  said  McGurk,  "  and  he  eatin' 
the  face  off  her  with  his  great  hungry  eyes." 

"  You're  an  ass,  McGurk." 

"  Love's  a  queer  thing,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  It  makes  shy 
things  of  us  all.  Fancy  Lascelles  blushing." 

"  I'm  not  in  love,"  said  Bernard,  "  and  if  I  were  I 
shouldn't  be  ashamed  of  it.  I've  been  in  love  often,  and  I 
don't  think  anything  of  it.  It's  just  an  exanthematous 
fever  we  go  through  periodically.  Like  the  flu,  a  previous 
attack  seems  to  confer  no  immunity,  but  each  successive  ill- 
ness becomes  less  and  less  serious." 

"  Love  isn't  a  disease,"  said  Hektor.     "  It's  a  game." 

"  Love's  all  my  eye,"  said  McGurk  scornfully.  "  We  all 
enjoy  a  bit  of  flirting  round  when  we're  young,  but  when  I 
want  to  marry  —  which  won't  be  for  a  long  time  yet,  I  hope 

—  it'll  be  for  something  a  little  more  solid  and  lasting  than 
love.  .  .  .  Sure  all   that   gibberish   and   raimeis  about  love 
is  the  invention  of  female  novelists." 

"  Hugo  puts  things  a  bit  crudely,"  said  Bernard,  "  but  I 
agree  with  him  in  the  main.  We  Irish  seem  to  be  a  bit 
saner  about  love  than  the  English.  .  .  .  Lord,  how  they 


354  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

wallow  in  it,  even  the  best  of  them.  Wells's  magnificent 
novels  are  sticky  with  the  slush  of  it.  ...  You  don't  find 
the  sentimental  heroine  of  the  English  novel  in  Irish  art, 
thank  heaven!  And  you  don't  find  love  the  mainspring  of 
the  plot  in  more  than  a  fraction  of  our  plays  and  novels. 
We  keep  it  in  its  place:  the  same  place  as  it  has  in  life." 

"  I  wonder,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  if  love  has  as  big  a  place 
in  English  life  as  it  has  in  their  novels." 

"  God  forbid,"  said  Hektor. 

"  Summary  of  an  average  English  novel,"  said  O'Dwyer: 

"  There  was  a  young  lady  in  love 
With  a  hero,  all  heroes  above. 
Some  strife,  and  some  stress 
Then  a  murmur  of  '  yes,' 
And  '  my  darling,'  '  my  sweetheart,' 
'  my  dove  !  '  " 

"  That's  it  to  a  T !  "  cried  McGurk.  "  Now  I  like  an 
author  like  Dumas.  Tons  of  incident  and  hardly  any  love 
—  and  that  without  too  many  of  the  slushy  details." 

"  Dickens  and  Scott  answer  to  that  description,"  said 
Bernard,  "  and  so  do  nearly  all  the  really  great  authors. 
It's  our  modern  mediocrities  that  do  the  wallowing  .  .  . 
for  lack  of  better  material." 

The  conversation  was  all  on  modern  literature  for  a  while 
and  then  reverted  naturally  to  the  original  topic. 

"  To  men,"  said  Bernard,  "  love  is  a  luxury.  To  women 
it  is  the  necessary  anaesthetic  to  render  the  hardships  of  pro- 
creation bearable." 

"  You're  a  cynic,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

Stephen,  who  had  hitherto  been  silent,  projected  himself 
suddenly  into  the  conversation  at  this  point. 

"  That  word  '  cynic,'  "  he  said.  "  It  annoys  me.  Look 
here.  You  and  I  and  all  of  our  crowd  know  how  this  war's 
going  to  end  if  the  Allies  win." 

"  They  won't,"  said  McGurk. 

"//  they  do,"  said  Stephen,  "  we  know  that  though  Eng- 


WAR  355 

land  declares  she  doesn't  covet  a  yard  of  territory  the  peace 
terms  will  give  her  several  thousand  square  miles.  We 
know  that  this  is  no  war  to  end  war:  we  know  that  Allied 
militarism  at  the  end  of  it  will  be  a  far  bigger  thing  than 
German  militarism  today.  We  know  it's  no  war  for  democ- 
racy. We  know  that  all  the  democratic  safeguards  now 
given  up  won't  be  restored  in  a  hurry.  We  know  this  is  no 
war  for  small  nations:  we  know  Ireland  will  be  still  under 
the  Act  of  Union  and  likely  to  stay  there  long  after  the  Ger- 
mans are  cleared  out  of  Belgium.  We  know  that  this  is  no 
war  for  principle  at  all,  but  a  commercial  war  resulting 
from  secret  diplomacy.  We  know  all  this  is  so,  and  time 
will  prove  us  right;  but  meanwhile  we're  called  cynics." 

"  And  the  sentimental  drivellers  who  believe  all  they're 
told  about  this  freedom-and-justice  stunt  call  us  unpractical 
dreamers  because  we  hold  the  very  practical  policy  of  drilling 
and  arming  to  secure  our  own  rights.  And  the  very  same 
people  who  call  this  policy  dreamy  and  unpractical  also  call 
it  selfish  and  narrow-minded.  Lord ! "  said  O'Dwyer, 
"  the  contradictory  abuse  that  I've  listened  to  these  few 
days.  '  Look  here ! '  I  said  to  one  man,  '  we  may  be 
dreamy  idealists,  or  we  may  be  selfish  cynics,  but  we  can't 
possibly  be  both.  Your  case  against  us  is  too  complete,  so 
the  probability  is  we're  neither.'  But  the  average  man  isn't 
logical." 

"  We  should  be  highly  flattered  by  being  called  dreamers," 
said  Bernard.  "  All  the  great  things  in  life  have  been  done 
by  people  who  were  called  that,  for  every  fact  is  the  material- 
ization of  a  dream.  There  can  be  no  birth  without  con- 
ception." 

"  The  fact  is,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  that  the  only  really  prac- 
tical people  are  the  dreamers.  The  man  who  prides  himself 
on  being  practical  is  mentally  blind." 

"  I  quite  agree,"  said  Hektor.  "  But  that's  a  dangerous 
doctrine  to  let  loose  unqualified  in  this  country.  Our  peo- 
ple are  only  too  ready  to  take  people  for  dreamers  who  are 
merely  wool-gatherers." 


356  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Dinner  being  over,  Hektor  now  arose,  and  in  a  mock 
after-dinner  manner  proposed  the  toast  of  the  Captain  of 
the  Emden,  then  at  the  height  of  its  career  of  destroying 
British  commerce.  When  this  toast  had  been  honoured  Mc- 
Gurk  arose  and  said : 

"  Gentlemen,  we  surely  cannot  allow  this  occasion  to  pass 
without  coupling  with  the  name  of  the  gay  and  gallant  cap- 
tain that  of  Madame  Britannia,  the  cast-off  mistress  of  the 
seas." 

They  adjourned  to  the  sitting-room  to  smoke,  and  amid 
all  the  jokes  and  arguments  that  whiled  away  the  evening, 
one  thought  kept  beating  in  Bernard's  mind: 

"  We're  at  war  with  our  own  country,  and  with  the 
world." 

5 

The  next  morning  the  Volunteer  manifesto  appeared  in 
the  newspapers,  and,  in  fulfilment  of  expectation,  the  vast 
majority  of  the  Volunteers  gave  in  their  adherence  to  Mr. 
Redmond,  only  about  two  thousand  men  in  Dublin  and 
about  ten  thousand  over  the  rest  of  the  country  standing  by 
the  original  Committee. 

Then  the  flood  gates  of  abuse  were  opened  and  the  foun- 
tains of  decency  were  broken  up.  Reason  and  argument 
were  consigned  to  oblivion  and  it  was  attempted  to  swamp 
the  recalcitrant  minority  with  a  flood  of  obloquy.  They 
were  called  traitors  to  Ireland  who  stood  for  the  very  cause 
for  which  Mitchel  was  jailed  and  Tone  died.  They  were 
called  cowards  who  had  thrown  down  the  gauntlet  to  a 
mighty  Empire  and  had  had  the  courage  to  stand  out  against 
their  own  country  when  she  took  the  wrong  course.  They 
were  called  hirelings,  many  of  whom  went  without  a  coat  in 
order  to  buy  a  gun.  They  were  called  selfish  who  submitted 
to  persecution  and  imprisonment  for  justice'  sake.  They 
were  called  narrow-minded,  who  stood  for  the  oldest  and 
greatest  of  causes  —  the  cause  for  which  the  whole  war  was 
alleged  to  be  fought  —  the  sacred  cause  of  national  freedom. 

And   they  were  called   Sinn   Feiners.  .  .  .  Years   before 


WAR  357 

Arthur  Griffin  had  propounded  a  policy  of  economic  de- 
velopment and  abstention  from  Westminster.  His  views  not 
meeting  with  the  approval  of  the  Party  machine  he  was 
crushed  and  driven  out  of  public  life  by  lies  and  obloquy. 
The  name  of  Sinn  Fein,  though  the  party  had  practically 
ceased  to  exist,  was  still  remembered  by  the  electorate  as 
one  of  ignominy,  and  it  was  a  simple  matter  for  the  Parlia- 
mentary leaders  to  attach  that  name,  along  with  the  whole 
load  of  calumny  associated  with  it,  to  the  Volunteers.  So 
Bernard  and  his  friends,  most  of  whom  had  never  belonged 
to  Sinn  Fein  —  Bernard  himself  had  barely  heard  of  it  — 
were  labelled  Sinn  Feiners:  traitors  and  outcasts. 

All  this  abuse  hurt  Bernard  acutely.  Reading  the  news- 
papers made  him  rage  incoherently.  Stephen,  however,  took 
it  all  very  philosophically;  advised  him  to  be  calm  and  not 
to  read  leading  articles;  and  prophesied  the  inevitable  re- 
action. But  in  vain.  Bernard  argued  high  and  low  with 
every  one  he  met;  broke  with  many  friends;  and  wrote 
furious  letters  to  the  papers  which  were  never  printed. 
Still  moving  in  the  social  cirales  to  which  he  was  accustomed 
he  found  himself  perpetually  involved  in  controversy.  Mrs. 
Gunby  Rourke  having  heard  that  he  did  not  intend  to  apply 
for  a  commission,  intimated  that  their  acquaintanceship 
should  come  to  an  end.  (Her  own  darling  boy,  George, 
developed  a  stiff  ankle  and  served  his  country  on  "  work 
of  national  importance,"  to  wit,  a  couple  of  hours'  clerical 
work  per  week  in  a  recruiting  office  for  the  first  few  months, 
to  be  dropped  afterwards  when  people  had  ceased  to  enquire 
were  you  "  doing  your  bit.")  Sir  Perry  Tifflytis  and  Mr. 
Bonegraft  were  very  contemptuous  of  "  shirkers  and  slack- 
ers," and  laughed  Bernard's  politics  to  scorn. 

"  Wish  I  was  your  age,  my  lad,"  said  Sir  Perry.  "  I'd 
be  the  first  in  the  firing-line.  By  gad,  what  a  chance  for  a 
young  man!  " 

Augustine  Reilly  said  the  war  was  for  truth  and  justice 
and  religion  and  all  that  Ireland  held  dear. 

"  It  isn't,"  said  Bernard.     "  But  even  if  it  was  Ireland 


358  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

couldn't  fight  in  it  unless  she  had  a  government  of  her  own 
to  declare  war." 

"  We  ought  to  stand  by  England,"  said  Augustine.  "  She 
has  given  us  Home  Rule.  It's  our  Christian  duty  to  for- 
give her.  '  Love  your  enemies,'  says  Christ." 

"  He  didn't  tell  us  to  show  it  by  making  new  enemies," 
replied  Bernard. 

"  '  Let  every  soul  be  subject  to  the  higher  powers,'  "  quoted 
Augustine. 

'  '  No  man  can  serve  two  masters,"  answered  Bernard. 

"  I  don't  see  the  point,"  said  Augustine. 

Which  of  you  by  taking  thought  can  add  one  cubic 
inch  to  his  brain?  '     Oh,  go  and  boil  your  head." 

Mr.  Bonegraft  appealed  to  Ireland's  historic  friendship 
for  France,  and  Bernard  responded  by  appealing  to  Eng- 
land's historic  friendship  for  Prussia.  Mr.  Bonegraft  had 
no  answer  to  this  and  Bernard  took  advantage  of  his  silence 
to  add : 

"  And  talking  about  our  French  alliance  in  Ninety-Eight 
you'd  have  been  the  first  to  denounce  it  if  you'd  been  alive 
then.  •  You'd  have  called  us  pro-French  and  said  that  Ire- 
land's duty  was  to  help  England  in  the  fight  against  French 
domination." 

"  But  this  is  Ireland's  war." 

"  I  don't  see  it." 

"  Ireland  will  be  disgraced  for  ever  if  she  leaves  civiliza- 
tion in  the  lurch." 

"  She'll  be  disgraced  in  good  company,  then,"  said  Ber- 
nard. "  She'll  rank  with  Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden, 
Switzerland,  Holland,  Bulgaria,  Greece,  Spain,  and  Italy, 
to  say  nothing  of  Asia  and  America." 

"  Well,  how  will  you  like  the  Germans  to  come  over 
here?"  said  Mr.  Bonegraft. 

"  They  aren't  coming." 

"  Look  at  Belgium." 

"  Look  at  Denmark.  She's  in  much  greater  danger  than 
we  are.  If  the  Germans  are  so  desperately  keen  on  annex- 


WAR  359 

ing  small  nations  why  don't  they  tackle  these  that  are  near 
at  hand  ?  " 

Mr.  Bonegraft  was  again  at  a  loss  for  an  answer,  so  he 
fell  back  on  his  last  line  of  defence. 

"  Ireland  must  do  her  duty  as  part  of  Britain,"  he  said. 

"  Then,"  said  Bernard,  "  why  didn't  you  say  so  at  once? 
If  you  believe  that,  the  other  reasons  don't  arise;  and  I 
deny  that  we're  part  of  Britain." 

This  was  Bernard's  universal  quarrel  with  the  garrison 
classes.  They  wanted  to  have  the  argument  both  ways:  to 
deny  Ireland's  nationhood,  and  yet  to  use  arguments  for 
her  entering  the  war  that  could  only  apply  on  the  assump- 
tion that  she  was  a  nation  .  .  . 

"What  a  narrow,  selfish  view  you  take!"  said  Mrs. 
Heuston  Harrington.  "Sinn  Fein:  Ourselves  alone:  and 
the  whole  of  civilization  in  danger !  " 

"  England  and  France  and  Russia  are  all  Sinn  Fein,"  said 
Bernard. 

"  How  do  you  make  that  out?  "  sneered  Mrs.  Heuston 
Harrington. 

"  Each  governs  itself  alone,  doesn't  it?  Aren't  they  all 
fighting  to  establish  Sinn  Fein  for  Belgium." 

"  Yes,  but  they're  all  united  for  a  common  aim." 

"  So  might  we  fight  for  the  same  aim  if  we  were  free  to 
do  so." 

"  But  you  are  free." 

"  I  beg  to  differ." 

"  Home  Rule  is  on  the  Statute  Book.  What  more  do 
you  want?  " 

"I'd  like  to  see  it  in  force  before  I  went  to  war  on  the 
strength  of  it." 

"  But  that  would  be  so  mean!  A  piece  of  political  bar- 
gaining, with  civilization  hanging  in  the  balance !  " 

"  So  you  call  it  mean  to  demand  our  own  freedom  before 
we  go  to  fight  for  the  freedom  of  others." 

"  But,  my  dear  Mr.  Lascelles,  we  are  free." 

"  I'm  afraid  we're  arguing  in  a  circle,"  said  Bernard. 


360  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Exactly !  That's  always  the  way  with  you  Sinn  Feiners. 
You  always  come  back  to  your  stale  old  hatred  of  England. 
That's  so  narrow-minded  of  you.  France  and  England  have 
made  up  their  quarrel.  Why  can't  Ireland?  " 

"  Because  our  grievance  is  still  unremedied." 

"  What  grievance  ?  " 

"  We're  still  deprived  of  our  parliament." 

"  Quite  right.  Why  should  England  give  up  what  she's 
won  ?  " 

"  I  thought  you  said  we  were  free?  If  England's  right  to 
conquer  Ireland  why  is  Germany  wrong  to  conquer  Bel- 
gium ?  " 

"  Oh,  that's  different." 

"How?" 

"  They  did  it  in  such  a  disgusting  way." 

"  I  suppose  England  conquered  us  in  a  decent  way?  " 

"  Now  you  needn't  dig  up  old  grievances  from  Ninety- 
Eight.  They're  past  and  gone." 

"  So  are  the  German  atrocities  in  Belgium." 

"  They're  things  of  yesterday." 

"  A  small  difference  in  the  vastness  of  eternity." 

"  Well,  it's  no  use  arguing  with  me.  I  hate  politics  and 
I  hate  disloyalty,  and  Ireland's  a  sink  of  both." 

"Ah!     So  you  dislike  Ireland?" 

"  I  should  think  so.     Nasty,  narrow  little  hole !  " 

"  Then  why  are  you  so  keen  on  bringing  it  into  the  war?  " 

"  I'd  much  rather  it  was  sunk  into  the  sea." 

"  So,"  said  Bernard,  "  the  whole  of  your  broad-minded 
attitude  is  this,  that  you  simply  prefer  another  and  bigger 
country  to  your  own.  You  might  as  well  consider  yourself 
broad-minded  for  preferring  a  fatter  man  to  your  husband." 

This  was  very  bad  taste  on  Bernard's  part,  especially  as 
Mrs.  Heuston  Harrington  was  a  widow.  But  he  was  thor- 
oughly exasperated  by  her  narrow,  truculent,  muddled  little 
mind. 

Lady  Mallaby  Morchoe  was  very  severe  on  Bernard's 
hatred  of  England. 


WAR  361 

"  Madam,"  said  Bernard,  "  I  love  the  English  people  a 
great  deal  better  than  you  do.  I  should  like  to  see  them 
paid  decent  wages  and  properly  fed  and  housed  and  edu- 
cated, and  I  should  like  to  see  their  execrable  social  system 
destroyed." 

"  Oh,  you're  a  Socialist,"  said  Lady  Mallaby  Morchoe  .  .  . 

Many  a  grave  humbug  lectured  Bernard  on  this  hatred  of 
his,  and  then  went  away  to  buy  an  evening  paper  and  gloat 
over  the  reports  of  German  slaughter.  Bernard,  whose 
heart  bled  for  every  man  killed,  Allied  or  German,  used  to 
listen  with  a  bitter  smile. 

Soon  Bernard  grew  tired  of  arguing.  The  Whigs  in  their 
fatuous  belief  in  the  English  Liberals  and  the  justice  of  the 
war  were  scarcely  less  irritating  than  the  Tories.  With 
these  latter,  however,  he  soon  found  it  impossible  to  converse 
without  losing  his  temper.  While  the  whole  of  Nationalist 
Ireland  in  its  generous  foolishness  surrendered  freely  to  the 
"  Union  of  Hearts,"  these  grim  stalwarts,  trenched  in  their 
haughty  stupidity,  made  no  sign  of  softening  their  opposi- 
tion to  the  national  idea,  and,  as  Bernard  found,  all  their 
arguments  boiled  down  to  a  bitter  sediment  of  hatred  for 
Ireland.  .  .  .  Moreover,  his  father,  already  treating  him 
with  coldness  as  a  result  of  recent  events,  now  became  com- 
pletely estranged,  and  Bernard  gradually  ceased  to  associate 
with  the  class  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up,  and  began 
to  make  a  place  for  himself  in  the  society  of  his  political 
brethren. 

The  very  day  after  the  split  was  his  company's  drill  night. 
The  pompous  little  Brohoon  looked  almost  majestic  as  he 
put  the  simple  issue  to  the  men  drawn  up  in  company  column 
in  the  gas-lit  hall. 

"  Those  who  consider  that  the  only  authority  capable  of 
committing  Ireland  to  a  foreign  war  is  an  Irish  Parliament 
elected  by  the  Irish  people  will  remain  in  their  ranks,"  he 
said.  "  Those  who  accept  the  rule  of  the  British  Parlia- 
ment will  fall  out.  No  doubt  they  will  immediately  go  and 
enlist  in  the  British  Army." 


362  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

With  the  issue  put  so  clearly  few  men,  however  loyal  to 
Mr.  Redmond,  had  the  courage  to  step  forward.  Only 
four,  bashfully  and  with  hesitation,  fell  out,  and  handed  in 
their  rifles  to  Brohoon.  A  jeer  from  the  remainder  was  in- 
stantly suppressed  by  the  officers.  Bernard  hoped  for  a 
while  that  this  was  a  sign  that  Stephen's  prophecy  would  be 
falsified,  but  next  week  only  eighty  men  out  of  one  hundred 
and  ten  turned  up  for  parade,  and  the  following  week  only 
sixty.  Within  a  month  their  strength  had  been  further  re- 
duced to  less  than  fifty,  but  after  that  it  decreased  no  more. 
By  that  time  the  popularity  of  the  Volunteers  had  reached 
its  lowest  ebb  and  the  inevitable  flow  had  begun. 

6 

A  few  days  after  the  Split,  Mr.  Asquith  addressed  a  select 
meeting  in  the  Mansion  House.  He  proclaimed  the  justice 
of  the  Allied  cause  and  appealed  to  Irishmen  to  join  the 
forces  of  the  Crown.  The  contribution,  he  said,  must  be 
the  free  gift  of  a  free  people,  a  pledge  which,  like  all  Eng- 
lish pledges,  was  violated  in  little  more  than  a  year  by  the 
introduction  of  a  Conscription  Bill. 

Bernard  went  out  into  the  street  that  night  to  observe  the 
temper  of  the  people.  It  was  quite  clear  that  either  the 
authorities  did  not  fully  trust  this  new-born  loyalty,  or  else 
feared  some  desperate  deed  from  the  recalcitrant  minority, 
for  the  Irish  public,  to  whom  the  Premier's  words  were  ad- 
dressed, was  carefully  excluded  from  the  Mansion  (admis- 
sion being  by  ticket,  and  the  tickets  being  reserved  for  trusted 
members  of  the  garrison  who  must  have  smiled  at  the  amiable 
sentiments  expressed  by  Mr.  Asquith)  and  the  streets 
swarmed  with  police,  who  formed  a  cordon  round  all  ap- 
proaches to  the  Mansion  House,  while  a  squadron  of  cavalry 
was  said  to  be  waiting  in  the  Castle  Yard  in  preparation  for 
all  eventualities. 

The  streets  were  crowded,  and  there  was  a  general  atmos- 
phere of  curiosity  and  excitement.  Questions  of  policy 
were  freely  discussed  by  groups  of  people  meeting  one  an- 


WAR  363 

other  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives.  The  sentimental  Eng- 
lishman wandering  amidst  the  crowds  would  have  heard 
little  to  flatter  him  from  these  people  whose  "  loyalty  "  had 
touched  every  soft  heart  in  the  Empire;  for  the  great  war 
was  looked  upon  entirely  from  an  Irish  point  of  view,  and 
Irish  "  loyalty  "  was  quite  obviously  conditional.  The  uni- 
versal argument  that  turned  the  scale  everywhere  was  that 
German  rule  would  probably  be  worse  than  English  rule, 
and  the  fact  that  France  was  on  England's  side  was  the 
only  argument  in  favour  of  England's  sincerity  that  car- 
ried any  weight  whatever.  The  general  belief  in  France 
struck  Bernard  as  rather  pathetic.  Many  Irishmen  who 
would  otherwise  have  been  as  anti-British  as  Bernard  were 
led  to  join  the  British  Army  out  of  a  belief  that  Ireland 
ought  to  repay  France  for  the  help  she  had  given  us  in 
Ninety-Eight.  "  France'll  see  us  through  all  right,"  said 
one  man  to  whom  Bernard  expressed  doubts  of  England's 
good  faith.  Bernard  had  not  the  heart  to  tell  him  of  the 
ways  of  diplomats. 

In  the  streets  leading  to  the  Mansion  House  the  "  free 
people  "  surged  fruitlessly  against  the  rocky  line  of  police. 
Mounted  constabulary  clattered  up  and  down  the  centre  of 
the  streets.  Men  and  women,  white-faced  under  the  arc 
lamps,  wandered  aimlessly  hither  and  thither.  Sounds  of 
singing  came  from  divers  directions:  rebel  airs  now  deemed 
harmless. 

Resting  on  a  seat  outside  Stephen's  Green,  Bernard  found 
Edwin  D'Arcy  the  young  poet  who  frequented  Mrs.  Heuston 
Harrington's  at  homes. 

"Well,  what's  your  opinion  of  all  this?"  asked  Bernard. 

"  I  have  none,"  said  D'Arcy.  "  Opinions  form  no  part  of 
the  poet's  equipment." 

"What  about  Shelley?"  said  Bernard,  promptly. 

"  His  ideas,  such  as  they  were,  merely  spoiled  his  poetry. 
I  prefer  to  stand  aloof  from  material  happenings.  Politics 
are  no  concern  of  mine.  They're  a  dirty  game." 

"  Not  essentially,"  snapped  Bernard.     "  Only  so  far  as 


364  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

men  make  them  so.  Man's  a  dirty  creature.  He  dirties 
everything  he  touches  from  Religion  to  literature.  But  you 
wouldn't  give  up  Religion  on  account  of  the  Inquisition  or 
the  Penal  Laws,  or  literature  on  account  of  the  Heptame- 
ron.  Then  why  Politics  ?" 

D'Arcy  swept  the  hair  back  from  his  forehead  and  said 
dreamily : 

"  They  are  too  small  and  finite  for  the  poet's  attention." 

"  Ass !  "  cried  Bernard.  "  The  life  of  man  is  in  politics. 
All  his  greatness  and  smallness,  all  his  nobility  and  mean- 
ness. You  describe  a  man  fully  to  me  if  you  tell  me  his 
religion  and  politics,  and  if  you  desert  politics  you  desert 
life.  Great  art  can't  be  made  out  of  the  pathology  of  a 
neurotic  soul.  Man  is  the  only  theme  worth  singing,  and 
man  collectively  should  be  the  hero  of  great  novels." 

"  Lascelles,  you're  a  philistine,"  said  D'Arcy. 

"  The  hair  of  the  human  head,"  said  Bernard,  "  is  a  hollow 
tube  growing  from  a  follicle.  If  allowed  to  exceed  a  certain 
length  a  hair  is  liable  to  split  and  dry  up.  You  really  ought 
to  get  your  hair  cut,  D'Arcy." 

He  left  him,  gaping  prosaically. 

And  now  the  opposition  element  began  to  make  itself  felt 
in  the  streets.  Arriving  at  the  top  of  Grafton  Street  Ber- 
nard could  see  above  the  crowd  a  string  of  torches  approach- 
ing. In  their  midst  was  a  waggonette.  Arrived  at  the  open 
space  the  waggonette  halted  and  was  immediately  sur- 
rounded by  the  torch-bearers  and  a  cordon  of  armed  men, 
whom  Bernard  recognized  by  their  uniform  as  members  of 
the  Citizen  Army:  dark,  stern,  dirty  men,  they  stood  at 
attention,  their  fixed  bayonets  flashing  in  the  dancing  light  of 
the  torches.  In  the  waggonette  Larkin  arose  and  addressed 
the  crowd. 

Bernard  shook  himself  free  from  the  press  and  walked 
back  towards  Dawson  Street.  Behind  him  he  could  hear 
an  occasional  cheer  punctuating  the  Labour  Leader's  speech. 
At  the  top  of  Dawson  Street  he  encountered  Mabel,  Molly, 
and  Jack  Harvey. 


WAR  365 

"Hello,  Lascelles!  This  is  a  pleasure,  old  chap,"  cried 
Jack  in  his  effusive  way.  "  Magnificent  display  of  loyalty, 
what?  Makes  one  proud  to  be  Irish,  doesn't  it?  " 

"  Does  one  need  the  compulsion?"  asked  Bernard,  drily. 

Mabel  and  Molly  both  laughed. 

"  Jack's  a  desperate  loyalist,"  said  Mabel. 

"  Well,  I  should  think  so,"  said  Jack.  "  Even  the  most 
extreme  Fenians  must  realize  that  England's  on  the  right 
side  this  time." 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Bernard.  "  And  even  if  she  is,  I 
don't  see  that  it's  any  reason  why  we  should  fight  for  her. 
We're  not  called  upon  to  fight  in  every  war  that  happens 
to  be  just  —  unless  we're  a  very  exceptional  nation." 

"  But  we're  British  subjects,"  said  the  scandalized  Jack. 

"  Oh,  go  to  hell !  "  exclaimed  Bernard,  impatiently. 

He  saw  Mabel  watching  his  impatience  with  eyes  gleam- 
ing with  amusement. 

"  Let's  have  a  stroll  around,"  he  suggested. 

"Oh,  let's!"  cried  Mabel,  and,  starting  off  by  his  side, 
left  Molly  to  follow  with  Jack. 

"  Are  you  a  loyalist,  too?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  I  don't  know  what  I  am,"  replied  Mabel.  "  You  see 
I've  never  taken  much  interest  in  politics  up  to  this.  .  .  . 
I  only  want  what's  best  for  Ireland,  and  it's  so  hard  to  know 
...  It  seems  a  shame  to  throw  Redmond  over  .  .  .  after 
all  he's  done  ..." 

She  spoke  tentatively  and  with  hesitation,  blushing  a  little, 
and  Bernard  listened  patiently. 

"  From  my  knowledge  of  Irish  history,"  said  he,  "  I'm 
convinced  that  the  only  safe  course  is  never  to  trust  England. 
We've  never  trusted  her  yet  without  being  let  down,  and  I 
don't  believe  she's  mended  her  ways." 

"  I  have  the  same  feeling  myself,"  said  Mabel,  "  but  Jack 
says  women  have  no  business  meddling  in  politics.  He  says 
they  follow  their  hearts  rather  than  their  heads." 

Bernard  laughed  loudly  at  this. 

"  Really,"  he  said,  "  even  though  he  is  your  brother,  I 


366  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

must  say  Jack's  a  donkey.  Is  he  thinking  of  joining  the 
army,  by  the  way?  " 

"  Oh,  yes.     He's  applied  for  a  commission  already." 

Bernard  found  Mabel  an  interesting  companion.  They 
walked  on,  discussing  a  variety  of  subjects,  quite  oblivious 
of  the  crowd.  At  the  remote  end  of  the  Green  they  came 
upon  a  little  knot  of  people  gathered  round  a  tiny  motor  car 
from  which  Brian  Mallow  was  delivering  a  passionate 
harangue. 

"  Let's  listen  to  him,"  said  Mabel,  and  they  pressed  for- 
ward towards  the  car. 

"  They  may  talk  about  German  atrocities,"  Mallow  was 
saying,  "  but  we  know  of  atrocities  nearer  home.  What 
about  the  pitch-caps  and  half -hangings  of  Ninety-Eight? 
What  about  Bachelor's  Walk  only  the  other  day?  Victims 
of  that  atrocity  are  lying  in  the  Dublin  hospitals  at  this  very 
minute.  They  may  talk  about  small  nationalities,  but  let 
us  tell  them  that  kindness  to  small  nations  might  begin  at 
home.  They  can  set  Ireland  free  without  plunging  into 
any  European  war.  And  as  for  broken  treaties,  what  right 
have  they  to  complain  of  broken  treaties  who  have  the  Treaty 
of  Limerick,  and  the  Renunciation  Act  of  '82,  and  the  Home 
Rule  Act  of  the  day  before  yesterday  to  their  credit?  .  .  . 
Oh,  Irishmen,  don't  be  blind,  trusting  fools  yet  again  after 
your  long  history  of  broken  faith.  England  is  a  liar,  Eng- 
land is  a  tyrant,  England  is  a  hypocrite,  England  is  your 
enemy!  ..." 

At  this  moment  a  squad  of  police  came  pushing  its  way 
through  the  crowd.  Mallow,  seeing  that  escape  was  hope- 
less, cried  out: 

"  Oh,  you  can  seize  and  imprison  and  murder  me  if  you 
like.  But  the  truth  you  can  never  kill.  .  .  .  Irishmen  are 
used  to  persecution  ..." 

There  was  a  murmur  from  the  crowd  as  the  orator  was 
dragged  roughly  from  his  place.  True,  Ireland  had  de- 
cided to  join  in  the  war,  but  the  tradition  of  seven  centuries 
will  not  vanish  in  a  month,  and  from  the  moment  that  Eng- 


WAR  367 

land  laid  her  hands  upon  an  Irishman  he  ceased  to  be  a 
factionist  and  became  a  patriot  and  a  martyr.  As  Bernard 
saw  the  glittering  helmets  of  the  police  recede  in  the  distance 
he  felt  that  the  tide  had  already  turned.  Brian  Mallow, 
pig-headed,  stupid  and  sincere,  had  killed  Imperialism. 

"  I  jolly  well  hope  he'll  be  shot,"  said  the  voice  of  Jack 
from  behind.  "  That  kind  of  fellow  almost  makes  one 
ashamed  to  be  Irish." 

"  Well,  hurry  up  and  get  naturalized  English,"  snapped 
Bernard,  and  hurried  away  with  Mabel. 

"  That  shows  how  the  English  look  on  us,"  said  Mabel. 

Bernard  looked  at  her,  admiring  her  flushed  cheeks  and 
flashing  eyes. 

"  I'm  glad  you  don't  agree  with  Jack,"  he  said. 

A  moment  later  Molly  overtook  them. 

"  It's  nine  o'clock,"  she  said.  "  We  must  be  getting 
home." 

"  You  can  get  a  tram  at  the  Pillar,"  said  Bernard.  "  I'll 
see  you  that  far." 

He  covered  the  distance  as  slowly  as  he  could,  which  was 
not  very  slow  owing  to  the  necessity  of  keeping  ahead  of 
the  others.  At  the  tram  he  held  her  hand  in  his  for  quite 
three  seconds.  It  made  no  resistance. 

"  By  gad !  "  he  said,  on  the  way  home,  "  she's  a  great  girl. 
.  .  .  Pretty  .  .  .  my  word!  .  .  .  and  she  can  talk,  too." 

He  played  with  visionary  possibilities  and  thought  about 
her  all  the  time  he  was  undressing. 

7 

"Well,   if   the   English   aren't   the   bloody   limit!"   said 
McGurk.     "  What  do  you  think  of  this?  " 
He  took  up  his  newspaper  and  read: 

"  O,  the  Irish  love  a  fight, 

Says  the  Shan  Van  Vocht, 
If  the  cause  be  wrong  or  right, 

Says  the  Shan  Van  Vocht. 
But  their  hearts  most  bravely  glow 


368  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

And  they  deal  their  hardest  blow 

When  their  foe  is  freedom's  foe, 

Says  the  Shan  Van  Vocht. 

That's  out  of  an  English  Unionist  paper,"  he  said.  "  Hell 
roast  them !  " 

"  I  could  forgive  Redmond  almost  everything  else,"  said 
Bernard,  "  but  I  can't  forgive  him  for  letting  us  in  for  that 
kind  of  thing.  The  English  papers  seem  to  be  crammed 
with  these  '  loyalist '  parodies.  I  suppose  it  flatters  some 
people." 

"  Not  it !  "  said  McGurk.  "  It'll  sicken  them.  It's  the 
best  thing  that  could  happen.  Listen  to  this  now: 

"God  save  our  noble  King! 

Says  the  Shan  Van  Vocht, 
Let  dissensions  all  take  wing, 

Says  the  Shan  Van  Vocht 
Hibernia   bends  the  knee, 
To  Britannia  bold  and  free, 
And  hurrah  for  loyalty! 

Says  the  Shan  Van  Vocht" 

"  No  more,  for  heaven's  sake,"  said  Bernard.  "  Who  the 
blazes  does  the  author  think  the  Shan  Van  Vocht  is?  " 

Enthusiastic  Englishmen,  with  that  stupidity,  self-suf- 
ficiency, and  incapacity  to  see  any  point  of  view  but  their 
own  which  distinguishes  their  race,  were  at  this  time  indulg- 
ing in  the  above  kind  of  nauseating  patronage  of  Ireland  by 
the  ream  and  the  volume.  The  true  reason  and  nature  of 
Ireland's  advocacy  of  the  Allied  cause  they  were  incapable 
of  appreciating,  and  it  would  have  offended  them  had  they 
discovered  it.  England's  real  feelings  towards  Ireland  were 
not  long  in  manifesting  themselves. 

"  Every  man,"  said  a  Volunteer  officer  to  his  company  on 
the  occasion  of  the  Split,  "  who  conscientiously  believes  that 
this  is  Ireland's  war  and  that  he  is  fighting  for  Ireland  in 
fighting  the  Germans,  should  hasten  to  don  the  khaki.  We, 
however,  who  do  not  hold  that  view,  will  remain  Irish  Vol- 


WAR  369 

unteers."  He  was  sentenced  to  three  months'  imprisonment 
for  "  prejudicing  recruitment." 

One  day,  Bernard  and  Stephen  attended  a  recruiting 
meeting  in  a  village  in  the  North  County  Dublin.  There 
was  a  platform  decorated  with  green  flags,  Union  Jacks, 
and  the  French  and  Belgian  flags,  in  the  street,  and  a  band 
was  playing  Irish  and  British  airs  alternately.  As  the  two 
young  men  entered  the  village  it  had  just  finished  The  Felons 
of  Our  Land  and  it  began  immediately  on  Rule  Britannia. 

11  Who  called  us  a  logical  people?  "  said  Stephen. 

The  speakers  ascended  the  platform  and  the  population 
began  to  gather  around.  The  chairman  was  a  retired 
Colonel  (to  judge  from  his  appearance)  and  the  principal 
speakers  were  a  young  subaltern  in  uniform,  a  Member  of 
Parliament,  and  the  President  of  the  local  branch  of  the 
United  Irish  League.  The  subaltern  led  off  with  a  few 
formal  remarks  about  the  justice  of  the  war  and  the  duty  of 
every  British  citizen  to  fight  for  his  King  and  country.  He 
was  listened  to  with  cold  attention.  Then  came  the  M.P. 
He  ranted  in  the  approved  style  about  gallant  little  Belgium 
and  France,  the  friend  of  Ireland,  and  the  rights  of  small 
nationalities.  He  was  lavishly  applauded.  Then  arose  the 
local  light. 

"  Since  England  has  given  us  Home  Rule,"  he  declared, 
"  it's  only  fair  we  should  help  her  in  her  own  hour  of 
trouble.  ..." 

But  the  chairman  quickly  called  him  to  order. 

"  I  can't  allow  political  speeches,"  he  said  with  some 
asperity. 

The  speaker  scratched  his  head,  clearly  puzzled  as  to  how 
to  proceed.  The  only  valid  reason  for  Irishmen  to  go  to 
the  front  being  taken  away,  he  could  not  think  of  any  other. 
He  floundered  for  a  minute,  and  then  a  mischevious  look 
came  into  his  eyes. 

"  If  the  Germans  come  to  Ireland,"  he  said,  "  they'd  treat 
us  like  the  English  did  in  Ninety-Eight  ...  or  worse, 
maybe." 


370  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"Hear!     Hear!"  yelled  Bernard  in  delight. 

Purple  with  rage  the  chairman  bounded  from  his  seat 
and  stalked  off  the  platform.  There  was  a  cheer  from  the 
crowd  and  the  band  struck  up  the  tune  of  Who  Fears  to 
Speak  of  Ninety-Eight? 

Bernard  laughed  heartily  as  he  and  Stephen  strolled  away. 

"  That  kind  of  thing  is  worth  tons  of  our  own  propa- 
ganda," he  said. 

He  and  Stephen  and  Hektor  and  O'Dwyer  had  spent  the 
last  few  weeks  in  a  feverish  rush  of  writing,  each  putting 
the  Volunteer  case  in  his  own  characteristic  way.  Stephen, 
in  cold  lucid  language,  appealed  to  pure  reason;  Bernard 
wrote  passionately  about  historic  analogies ;  Hektor  revealed 
the  workings  of  European  diplomacy;  and  O'Dwyer  wrote 
scathing  verses.  Stephen  issued  a  handbill  which  ran  as 
follows : 

TRUTH  AND  REASON 

The  truth  at  the  bottom  of  any  question  is  simple 
and  easy  to  find  if  honestly  sought.  The  essence  of 
truth  is  simplicity,  and  if  a  case  is  complex  it  should 
be  looked  upon  with  suspicion.  One  simple  all- 
sufficing  reason  is  more  cogent  than  a  multiplicity  of 
arguments,  for  in  multiplicity  lies  redundance  and 
contradiction.  The  Volunteer  case  is  simple.  In  ac- 
cordance with  all  the  principles  upon  which  National- 
ism is  based  we  deny  the  right  of  any  body  or  party 
to  commit  the  Irish  People  to  a  foreign  war  save  only 
an  Irish  Parliament  freely  elected.  This  argument  is 
all-sufficient,  and  no  plea  of  the  justice  of  the  war  or 
Ireland's  interest  therein  or  any  other  reason  or  excuse 
can  stand  against  it  or  need  be  discussed.  On  the 
other  hand  the  Parliamentary  Party's  case  is  too  well 
bolstered  up  with  arguments  to  be  essentially  sound. 
Suppose  for  the  sake  of  argument  we  grant  their  con- 
tention that  Ireland's  interests  are  at  stake  in  this 
war.  How  then  does  their  second  contention  stand, 
namely  that  we  are  bound  to  assist  England  out  of 
gratitude  for  Home  Rule?  For  surely  it  is  no  return 
to  England  to  fight  for  our  own  interests?  There  is 
not,  in  fact,  a  single  argument  of  the  Party's  which 


WAR  371 

is  not  open  to  question,  whereas  not  even  Mr.  Red- 
mond himself  dare  deny  our  basic  principle. 

Stand  by  the  simple  case  and  join  the  Irish  volun- 
teers. 

Bernard  harped  a  good  deal  on  one  point,  namely,  that 
the  Home  Rule  Act  was  not  regarded  in  England  as  an  in- 
ternational treaty,  but  as  a  party  measure,  which  another 
English  party  might  rescind  without  in  any  way  tarnishing 
England's  honour  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  and  that  Nation- 
alists need  not  count  upon  Home  Rule  as  a  reward  for  her 
services,  since  the  Unionists  could  with  equal  justice  demand 
its  repeal  as  a  reward  for  theirs. 

O'Dwyer's  verses  were  of  a  ribald  kind.  Phrases  like  Sir 
Edward  Grey's  "  One  Bright  Spot,"  Mr.  Asquith's  "  Free 
gift  of  a  free  people,"  and  Redmond's  "  sharp  curve  in  our 
policy,"  he  gleefully  seized  upon  as  refrains.  One  typical 
example  was  sung  by  McGurk  at  a  concert : 

"  O,  the  Bill  is  on  the  Book, 

Says  the  John-John-Joe. 
'Tis  a  comfortable  nook; 

Says  the  John-John-Joe. 
And  tho'  the  curve  be  sharp, 
From  the  Bulldog  to  the  Harp, 
Sure  'tis  only  cranks  will  carp, 

Says  the  John-John-Joe." 

But  all  their  wit  and  effort  went  for  naught,  for  nobody 
but  those  who  already  agreed  with  them  ever  read  their 
papers. 

And  it  was  not  long  before  the  enemy  struck  back.  Irish 
Volunteers  were  deported  from  one  end  of  the  country  to 
the  other,  or  confined  to  certain  districts.  Thus,  one  promi- 
nent local  leader  was  banished  from  his  home  in  Kerry  and 
assigned  the  northern  half  of  County  Wicklow  for  his  future 
habitat;  Crowley  was  confined  to  a  radius  of  fifty  miles 
around  Ballylangan ;  another  man  was  forbidden  to  approach 
to  within  ten  miles  of  any  coast;  and  finally  Stephen  re- 


372  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

ceived  an  order  confining  him  to  the  city  and  suburbs  of 
Dublin. 

"Will  you  obey  it?"  asked  Bernard. 

"  Until  it  becomes  inconvenient,"  said  Stephen.  "  I've  no 
desire  for  imprisonment,  but  I  won't  submit  if  I  don't 
want  to." 

Then  their  newspapers  were  attacked.  There  were  three 
of  these:  Sinn  Fein,  a  long-established  weekly,  organ  of  the 
relics  of  the  political  party  of  that  name ;  Irish  Freedom,  an 
independent  and  very  outspoken  monthly;  and  Ireland,  a 
daily,  a  fearless  supporter  of  the  cause  of  the  Volunteers. 
One  morning  a  force  of  police  and  military  arrived  at  the 
offices  of  each  of  these  organs.  An  entry  was  forced;  all 
copies  of  the  papers  were  seized  upon  and  carried  away ;  the 
printing  machinery  was  dismantled,  and,  in  one  case, 
smashed ;  and  further  publication  was  prohibited.  The  only 
paper  to  survive  the  storm  was  the  Irish  Volunteer,  which, 
being  entirely  devoted  to  technical  military  articles,  furnished 
no  handle  that  its  enemies  could  lay  hold  of  as  an  excuse  for 
suppression. 

"  Opening  of  hostilities  on  the  Irish  front,"  announced 
McGurk.  "  British  troops  occupied  several  Irish  positions 
this  morning.  There  were  no  losses  but  honour." 

There  were  two  or  three  arrests  for  writings  and  speeches 
at  about  the  same  time,  and  Brian  Mallow,  coming  up  for 
trial,  received  three  months'  imprisonment. 

"  What  will  they  say  of  this  at  Ashbury  ?  "  thought  Ber- 
nard. He  had  recently  received  a  copy  of  the  Ashbury 
Chronicle,  which  announced  the  deaths  in  action  of  several 
Old  Ashburians,  among  whom  were  Bernard's  old  enemies, 
Sherringham  and  Tomkins.  Tomkins  was  described  as  "  a 
gentle,  good-humoured  boy,  with  a  deep  devotion  to  St. 
Aloysius,"  and  Sherringham  was  "  a  model  of  all  that  an 
English  Catholic  gentleman  should  be." 

"  He  looks  better  in  uniform  than  in  my  memory,"  said 
Bernard,  surveying  the  accompanying  photograph. 


WAR  373 

8 

"  This  suit  positively  sings  your  praises  as  a  valet,  Swa- 
thythe.  How  do  I  look?  " 

"  Very  genteel  indeed,  sir." 

"  There  are  only  two  kinds  of  people  in  the  world,  Swa- 
thythe.  Those  who  wear  their  best  clothes  on  Sunday,  and 
those  who  wear  their  worst." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  That  was  a  very  snobbish  remark  on  my  part,  Swa- 
thythe." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  But  very  profound  all  the  same,  Swathythe." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  I  think,  however,  one  may  safely  stretch  a  point  when 
taking  a  young  lady  out  to  tea  for  the  first  time." 

"  No  doubt  of  ft,  sir." 

Exceptionally  spruce  and  very  pleased  with  himself,  Ber- 
nard set  out  for  the  rendezvous.  It  had  not  taken  him  long 
to  fall  in  quasi-love  with  Mabel,  her  prettiness,  attractive 
conversation,  and  evident  liking  for  himself  making  him  a 
very  willing  victim.  Of  passion  he  had  none  as  yet  —  but 
what  young  man  will  refuse  the  companionship  of  a  pretty 
girl  when  it  can  be  had  for  the  asking?  We  like  the  love 
that  comes  easy,  and  laughing  love  runs  smoother  than  grand 
passion. 

She  ran  smiling  to  meet  him  at  the  railway  station  and 
they  took  tickets  for  Howth.  At  first  they  said  little;  just 
sat  in  opposite  corners  and  smiled  at  each  other.  They 
could  not  look  at  each  other  without  breaking  out  into 
beaming  smiles.  It  was  a  dull,  cold  day,  and  Bernard  feel- 
ing a  nip  even  through  his  heavy  frieze  coat,  wondered  how 
she  kept  from  shivering  in  her  thin  tweed  jacket,  eked  out 
with  a  shabby  and  exiguous  fur.  He  noticed  a  chilblain  on 
one  finger  that  peeped  through  a  hole  in  her  glove,  and  he 
thought  of  those  chilly  little  hands  busy  typewriting  in  the 
rawness  of  the  early  mornings  when  he  was  only  just  rising 


374  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

from  bed.  .  .  .  He  cursed  the  world's  economic  system 
fiercely  in  his  heart. 

"  If  mother  only  knew  what  I  was  up  to!  "  exclaimed 
Mabel,  happily. 

"  Is  she  very  puritanical  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no.  Selfish,  merely.  She  thinks  we  ought  to  stay 
at  home  to  keep  her  company.  We'd  be  always  dancing 
attendance  on  her  if  she  had  her  way.  Susan  gives  in  to  her 
and  never  gets  a  breath  of  fresh  air  in  consequence.  I 
always  have  to  make  up  some  unpleasant  excuse  if  I  want  to 
get  away.  If  she  thought  I  was  going  to  enjoy  myself 
there'd  be  ructions." 

"  The  appalling  selfishness  of  parents !  "  declaimed  Ber- 
nard. He  told  her  about  O'Dwyer's  casting  forth. 

"  Mother  made  Susan  promise  not  to  get  married  during 
her  lifetime.  She  was  a  fool  to  do  it,  I  think,  but  then 
.  .  .  Susan  ..." 

Bernard  laughed  as  she  hesitated. 

"  Go  on,"  he  urged. 

"  O,  nothing,"  she  said. 

At  Howth  station  they  took  a  tram  to  the  summit,  from 
the  top  of  which  they  had  a  fine  view  of  the  harbour,  Ire- 
land's Eye  and  Lambay,  all  seemingly  asleep  in  the  grey 
light  of  the  December  afternoon.  Bernard  told  her  about 
the  gun-running,  omitting,  however,  all  reference  to  Milady 
and  to  the  part  Mabel's  own  simulacrum  had  played  in  the 
drama.  He  had  not  yet  finished  his  narrative  when  they 
came  to  a  cottage  with  the  inviting  signboard: 

TEA  AND  HOT  SCONES 

They  went  inside  and  over  steaming  hot  cakes  and  toast  and 
black  currant  jam  she  listened  eagerly  to  the  conclusion  of 
the  tale:  the  storm,  the  landing,  and  the  battle  of  Clontarf. 
Tea  over,  they  sat  talking  over  a  hundred  different  subjects, 
Bernard  smoking  his  pipe,  she  with  a  cigarette  balanced  be- 
tween her  dainty  lips.  She  could  chatter  interestingly 


WAR  375 

enough,  and  she  had  an  amusing  gift  of  repartee,  but  Ber- 
nard was  a  little  disappointed  at  her  attitude  towards  the 
things  of  which  he  thought  most  highly.  She  cared  nothing 
for  poetry,  and  laughed  at  any  he  quoted.  Most  of  the  great 
novelists  she  thought  "  dry,"  yet  her  taste  in  literature  was 
neither  cheap  nor  vicious.  Her  favourite  writers  were 
mediocrities.  She  knew  nothing  about  painting,  but  she 
"liked"  certain  pictures:  Landseer's  work,  and  Hobbema's 
Middleharnis  Avenue,  and  The  Fighting  Temeraire.  She 
"  liked  "  music,  too,  she  said,  and  it  happened  that  her  taste 
was  good.  She  preferred  Figaro  to  "  any  of  those  musical 
comedies,"  and  she  was  very  "  fond  of  "  some  of  Beethoven's 
work.  But  she  did  not  know  that  music  possessed  a  mean- 
ing (she  thought  it  was  no  more  than  a  sound-pattern)  ; 
and  she  did  not  know  that  Beethoven  was  great  and  Verdi 
second-rate ;  she  had  no  standards  of  merit  and  merely  went 
by  her  preferences. 

It  did  not  take  Bernard  long  to  find  out  all  this,  and  then 
he  resigned  himself  to  the  inevitable  and  allowed  her  to 
chatter  in  her  own  inimitable  way:  which  was  quite  suf- 
ficient to  charm  away  his  disappointment.  She  was  quick  to 
see,  too,  where  his  main  interest  lay,  and  it  was  not  long  be- 
fore she  started  to  question  him  on  politics. 

"  Tell  me,"  she  said,  "  could  Ireland  really  manage  to 
get  on  if  she  was  independent?  Everyone  I  know  says  we 
couldn't  do  without  England's  money." 

"  Everyone  is  extraordinarily  ignorant,"  said  Bernard. 
"  Especially  those  who  are  most  dogmatic.  So  far  from 
our  getting  any  money  from  England,  she  gets  it  from  us. 
For  the  last  fifty  years  the  amount  she's  spent  on  us  has 
always  been  about  three  millions  less  than  our  annual  rev- 
enue. If  we  were  free  we'd  have  our  whole  revenue  to  our- 
selves, and  it  would  be  quite  sufficient  for  our  needs.  Nor- 
way and  Sweden  and  Denmark  and  Belgium  and  Bulgaria 
and  a  few  other  small  nations  have  all  revenues  in  or  about 
the  same  as  ours :  some  a  little  more,  some  a  little  less.  And 
on  that  they  run  Kings  and  courts  and  armies  and  navies 


376  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  diplomatic  services  and  mercantile  marines,  and  much 
better  educational  and  agricultural  systems  than  ours.  .  .  . 
So  far  from  not  being  able  to  manage  without  England,  I 
don't  see  how  we're  going  to  escape  ruination  unless  we  get 
rid  of  her  at  once." 

"  I'm  so  glad  to  know  that,"  said  Mabel.  "  I  shan't  be 
sat  upon  in  argument  again." 

Evening  fell,  and  wandering  out  under  the  stars,  they 
walked  slowly  down  the  hill.  They  spoke  little,  and  when 
they  did  their  voices  were  strangely  hushed.  .  .  .  She  shiv- 
ered slightly,  and  apprehensively  he  caught  her  arm. 

"  You're  cold  ?  "  he  said. 

"  Only  slightly,"  she  assured  him.  With  her  upper  arm 
she  imprisoned  his  hand  against  her  side.  He  slipped  his 
arm  right  through  and  held  hers  close.  United  in  warm 
intimacy  they  strode  down  the  hill  keeping  step  together. 
Her  eyes  shone  in  the  darkness.  .  .  . 

Quite  frankly  their  hands  dwelt  upon  the  farewell  hand- 
clasp as  he  left  her  at  her  door  .  .  . 

"  She's  mine  ..."  he  said  to  himself  that  evening,  and 
not  even  a  fleeting  vision  of  a  certain  avenue  of  cedars  could 
disturb  his  satisfaction. 

9 

Within  a  week  of  the  declaration  of  war  Sandy  applied 
for  a  commission  in  the  British  Army,  and  Eugene  was  not 
long  in  following  his  example.  Sandy's  action  was  only  to 
be  expected,  for  he  was  a  gay,  thoughtless  youth  who  took  no 
interest  in  politics  and  leaped  at  this  chance  of  change  and 
adventure.  But  Bernard  took  it  upon  himself  to  remon- 
strate with  Eugene. 

"  It's  no  use,  Bernard,"  replied  Eugene.  "  Only  your 
biased  frame  of  mind  prevents  you  seeing  the  justice  of  this 
war.  Freedom,  Civilization  and  Christianity  are  at  stake, 
and  my  conscience  tells  me  I  must  go  to  their  defence." 

"  I  like  your  self -righteousness,"  said  Bernard,  angrily. 
"  You  religious  people  seem  to  think  no  one  has  a  conscience 


WAR  377 

but  yourselves.  Biased  frame  of  mind,  indeed!  I've  as 
much  care  for  Freedom  and  Civilization  as  you  have. 
That's  why  I'm  in  the  Irish  Volunteers." 

"  Don't  let  us  quarrel  over  it,  anyway,"  said  Eugene,  and 
Bernard,  looking  at  his  honest,  good-humoured  and  per- 
turbed countenance,  and  thinking  of  dreadful  possibilities, 
relented.  He  criticized  no  more,  and  said: 

"  Well,  good  luck,  old  man." 

About  the  same  time  he  received  a  letter  from  Wil- 
loughby,  who  was  in  training  at  Salisbury  Plain. 

"  /  think  even  you  will  agree"  it  ran,  "  that  England  is 
fighting  for  a  just  cause  this  time.  Believe  me,  Bernard,  we 
didn't  want  this  war.  It  is  Germany's  doing  entirely,  and 
when  that  monstrous  war-machine  is  smashed  you  will  re- 
joice with  us  that  war  has  been  banished  from  the  earth  .  .  . 

"  Religion,  morality,  all  the  amenities  of  civilization  as 
we  know  it,  are  at  stake.  The  free  man  of  the  English  and 
French  ideal  is  at  issue  with  the  trained  machine  of  the  Ger- 
man system  .  .  . 

"  I  knew  that  in  such  a  cause  Ireland  would  not  be  back- 
ward. Her  action  in  this  crisis  has  won  her  many  friends. 
Even  my  brother  Frank  has  become  a  Home  Ruler  .  .  . 

"  I  expect  I'll  meet  you  one  of  these  days  on  a  field  in 
France  .  .  .  " 

"  Moore  was  right,"  groaned  Bernard.  "  What  hellish 
power  rules  us  that  can  turn  the  honesty  and  bravery  of 
these  fine  young  men  to  its  own  vile  ends?  .  .  .  And  what 
can  I  say  to  Willoughby?  " 

10 

Soldiers  marching  to  battle.  .  .  .  Bernard  stood  at  the 
foot  of  Grafton  Street  to  watch  them.  First  came  the  band, 
playing  a  stirring  martial  air  that  set  the  heart  beating  and 
made  the  feet  want  to  go  a-marching.  Next  came  the  fight- 
ingmen,  khaki-clad  figures  carrying  rifles,  heavy  laden  with 
packs,  great-coats,  trench  tools,  and  mess-tins.  A  thousand 


378  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

men  .  .  .  two  thousand.  One  day's  casualty  list.  .  .  . 
They'll  bury  as  many  tomorrow.  Every  day  a  mass  of  men 
like  these  will  be  blotted  out  of  life,  ever  to  be  replaced  by 
fresh  drafts  from  home. 

"  Morituros  vos  saluto,"  muttered  Bernard. 

But  these  doomed  faces  are  cheerful.  Boyish  faces  most 
of  them  .  .  .  Irish  faces.  Sons  of  the  soil  of  Ireland 
marching  to  die  for  —  what  ?  Famine  and  war  and  emigra- 
tion have  drained  her  of  her  sons  for  centuries.  The  flower 
of  her  manhood  is  gone  beyond  recall.  She  is  a  nation  bled 
almost  white.  .  .  .  Yet  forth  they  go  as  their  kind  have 
ever  gone,  believing  that  the  motherland  requires  it. 

"  Two  thousand  Irishmen  lost  to  Ireland,"  says  Bernard, 
and  bitterly  curses  those  responsible  for  the  wastage. 

The  column  passes  on :  the  band  ceases :  the  men  strike  up 
the  well-known  air  of  Tipperary.  The  common-place, 
hackneyed  melody,  sung  by  voices,  soon  to  be  silenced  for 
ever,  mingles  with  and  is  drowned  by  the  hum  of  traffic. 
Unexalted  melancholy  takes  possession  of  the  listener. 


Christmas  came:  the  first  Christmas  of  the  war,  and  the 
last  before  the  food-shortage.  But  it  brought  no  peace  or 
good-will.  In  the  trenches,  attempts  to  fraternize  on  the 
part  of  the  men  on  both  sides  were  sternly  discountenanced 
by  the  Allied  Commanders.  The  last  shred  of  humanity 
was  torn  away  from  warfare. 

Owing  to  the  uncompromising  attitude  of  his  father,  Ber- 
nard was  not  invited  to  share  the  family  Christmas  dinner 
and  was  looking  forward  to  eating  it  in  solitary  state  under 
the  servile  patronage  of  Swathythe  when  he  received  an 
invitation  from  Stephen  to  spend  Christmas  week  with  him 
at  Glencoole.  Bernard  accepted  gladly,  and  it  was  arranged 
that  they  should  motor  out  on  the  night  of  Christmas  Eve. 

He  spent  the  afternoon  with  Mabel.  He  met  her  at 
three  o'clock,  and  they  strolled  about  the  streets  together  in 
the  ever  thickening  crowd.  There  was  no  sign  of  war  about 


WAR  379 

the  city  that  evening.  The  streets  were  brightly  lit,  the  shop 
windows  gaily  adorned  and  blazing  with  light;  the  res- 
taurants were  packed  with  chattering  people,  and  the  air  of 
universal  cheerfulness  associated  with  Christmas  was  in  no 
wis.e  diminished.  The  war  had  not  yet  brought  its  hard- 
ships. 

Bernard  and  Mabel  mingled  with  the  crowd  of  shoppers, 
parcel-laden,  wrapped  and  muffled,  breathing  steam  into  the 
frosty  air. 

"  I  love  jostling  with  a  good  crowd,"  said  Bernard. 

"  So  do  I,"  replied  Mabel. 

They  went  to  a  book-shop  where  he  bought  her  a  volume 
of  Mangan's  poems  and  Mitchel's  Last  Conquest,  and  then 
she  shyly  presented  him  with  a  tie-pin  which  she  had  kept 
concealed  in  her  hand-bag  up  to  this.  After  that  they  went 
to  Mitchell's  and  after  a  long  wait  secured  a  rather  scram- 
bled tea.  Bernard's  every  sense  was  acute  to  seize  its  own 
particular  pleasure.  He  enjoyed  the  crimson-shaded  lights, 
and  the  cheerful  glow  of  the  red  berries  amid  the  black 
holly-leaves  of  the  decorations.  He  enjoyed  the  stupefying 
clamour  of  many  voices  with  its  accompaniment  of  clatter- 
ing cups,  mixed  as  it  was  with  the  alternate  crescendo  and 
diminuendo  of  the  street-noises  as  the  doors  swung  open  and 
closed  again.  The  sense  of  being  at  one  with  all  humanity 
that  always  seized  upon  him  when  in  a  crowd  thrilled 
through  his  being  now.  .  .  .  The  maid  bustled  up  with  the 
tea:  delicate  fragrance  of  China:  warmer  of  the  hearts  of 
men.  He  watched  Mabel  pouring  it  out,  holding  the  pot 
gracefully  as  only  a  girl  knows  how.  .  .  .  Delicious  creamy 
cakes  that  seemed  to  melt  in  the  mouth.  .  .  .  The  world 
seemed  a  good  place  in  those  few  minutes. 

"  Hurrah  for  living!  "  he  said,  looking  into  Mabel's  eyes, 
and  she  responded  with  a  laugh  .  .  . 

Stephen  arrived  at  Harcourt  Street  that  night  at  the  time 
appointed  and  they  set  out  at  once  in  Bernard's  little  car. 
They  rushed  through  the  sleeping  villages  of  Terenure  and 
Rathfarnham  and  out  along  the  slushy  roads  through  the 


380  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

cold  night  air  towards  the  mountains.  As  they  climbed 
towards  the  high  ground  they  felt  the  nip  of  frost,  and  the 
surface  of  the  road  hardened,  and  glittered  under  the  lamp- 
light of  the  car.  Up  and  up  they  panted,  then  slid  down 
the  dark  glenside,  crossed  the  bottom,  and  up  again. 

"  By  the  way,"  said  Stephen,  "  don't  talk  politics  to  my 
father.  He's  a  bit  queer  on  the  subject.  He's  an  old 
Fenian  and  got  badly  let  down  by  some  of  his  friends,  so 
he's  been  sour  about  it  ever  since.  .  .  .  He  looks  on  politics 
much  as  your  friend  Fergus  Moore  does,  but  he's  bitterer. 
.  .  .  Whoa!  Here  we  are." 

Bernard  pulled  up  as  they  reached  a  cottage  gate. 
Stephen  leaned  across  him  and  tootled  the  horn  before  dis- 
mounting, whereupon  an  old  man  came  rushing  out  of  the 
cottage  and  embraced  Stephen  with  an  effusiveness  that 
rather  embarrassed  Bernard. 

"Come  in!  Come  in!"  cried  Michael  Ward,  and  as 
Bernard  came  blinking  into  the  light  of  the  sitting-room  the 
first  thing  that  caught  his  eye  was  a  large  photograph  of  his 
dead  Uncle  Christopher  over  the  mantelpiece. 

Before  he  could  make  any  comment,  however,  he  was 
bustled  upstairs  to  a  low-ceilinged,  plainly-furnished  bed- 
room, while  the  old  man  ran  off  to  hasten  supper.  As  he 
performed  his  ablutions  Bernard  shouted  across  to  Stephen's 
room  that  the  photograph  in  the  sitting-room  was  of  an  uncle 
of  his  and  asked  for  an  explanation.  Stephen  was  much 
surprised. 

"  He  was  a  great  friend  of  my  father's  in  days  gone  by," 
he  said.  "  They  were  mixed  up  in  one  of  those  Fenian 
plots.  .  .  .  To  think  of  his  being  your  uncle !  " 

"  He  was  more.  He  was  my  godfather  .  .  .  and  he  had 
a  lot  to  do  with  making  me  a  Nationalist." 

"  By  Jove!  .  .  .  He  did  the  same  for  me." 

"  How?  "  asked  Bernard,  all  curiosity. 

"  I'll  tell  you  later,"  said  Stephen.  "  We'd  best  be  going 
down  now.  .  .  .  Remember  what  I  told  you." 

There  was  a  steaming  dish  of  bacon  and  eggs  with  tea 


WAR  381 

and  potato-cakes  on  the  table  when  they  came  downstairs. 
Michael  Ward  was  keenly  interested  to  learn  that  Bernard 
was  Chris  Reilly's  nephew.  Shaking  his  hand  with  renewed 
warmth,  he  said: 

"  Sure  he  was  talking  to  me  about  you  the  last  day  he  was 
here  ...  it  must  be  fifteen  years  ago." 

Bernard  and  Stephen  fell  to  on  the  appetizing  supper,  and 
Michael  Ward  sat  and  watched  them. 

"  Have  you  reformed  the  world  yet,  Stephen  ? "  he 
grunted  after  some  moments'  silence. 

"  We've  made  a  beginning,"  said  Stephen,  quietly. 
"  How's  the  farm  going?  " 

"  Well  enough,  Stephen.  But  I  wish  I  had  you  back, 
my  boy." 

When  the  meal  was  over  they  sat  and  talked  for  a  couple 
of  hours.  Bernard  brought  his  uncle's  name  forward  sev- 
eral times  in  the  hope  of  hearing  some  of  his  past  history. 
He  had  often  questioned  his  mother  on  the  subject,  but  she 
knew  nothing  of  the  political  side  of  Christopher's  life,  and 
was  disinclined  to  talk  about  what  she  considered  the  dis- 
creditable end  to  it.  But  old  Ward,  though  ready  to  speak 
in  terms  of  enthusiasm  about  his  friend's  qualities,  was  very 
reticent  about  his  history,  and  Bernard  soon  dropped  the 
subject. 

As  they  went  upstairs  to  bed  that  night  Bernard  said  to 
Stephen : 

"  I  say.     You  know  you've  broken  bounds?  " 

"  I  know,"  said  Stephen.  "  And  it's  not  the  first  time, 
either.  I  risk  it  now  and  again." 

12 

Bernard  began  for  the  first  time  to  know  Stephen  fully 
during  that  visit.  He  had  been  inclined  to  underrate  him 
before,  thinking  that  his  intense  occupation  with  the  things 
of  the  moment  was  a  sign  of  narrowness.  Now  from  close 
acquaintance  he  could  see  that  Stephen's  outlook  was  as  wide 
as  his  own  while  he  had  a  power  of  concentration  on  the 


382  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

matter  in  hand  and  a  grip  of  detail  in  which  Bernard  was 
woefully  lacking. 

"Going  up  the  glen  today?"  asked  Michael  Ward  one 
morning  as  they  set  out  from  the  cottage.  "  It  isn't  what 
it  used  to  be,"  he  said,  sadly.  "  Most  of  my  woods  have 
been  cut  down  .  .  .  gone  to  make  masts  for  British  ships, 
most  likely.  .  .  .  Divil  sink  them." 

"  Father's  crazy  about  trees,"  said  Stephen,  as  they  climbed 
the  far  slope  of  the  glen.  "  He's  right,  too.  I'm  afraid  it 
looks  as  if  our  children  will  be  born  into  a  treeless  island. 
Look  at  that." 

They  were  passing  a  clearing:  the  site  of  the  very  wood 
in  which  Michael  Ward  and  Chris  Reilly  had  walked  fifteen 
years  ago. 

"  I  think  a  clearing  is  one  of  the  saddest  sights  there  is," 
said  Bernard.  "  To  think  that  this  is  going  on  all  over  the 
country.  And  how  irreparable  it  is.  If  we  got  a  Republic 
tomorrow  the  country  wouldn't  be  fully  afforested  in  our 
life  time.  .  .  .  Auri  sacra  fames!  What  soulless  van- 
dalism !  " 

"  It's  rotten  economics,  anyway,"  said  Stephen. 

They  turned  back  and  surveyed  the  valley  behind  them. 

"  What  a  pretentious  bridge  that  is,"  remarked  Bernard. 
"  It  would  be  big  enough  for  the  Shannon." 

"  Funny  you  noticed  that,"  said  Stephen.  "  Your  uncle 
made  the  same  remark  to  me  years  ago  when  I  was  a  boy." 
And  he  told  Bernard  all  about  Chris's  visit. 

It  was  a  typical  Irish  winter's  day,  soft  and  moist,  with  a 
tinge  of  grey  over  everything.  Heavy  grey  clouds  hung  in 
the  sky  with  a  pearly  shimmer  on  them  in  the  region  of  the 
sun.  The  bracken  and  frocken  were  dank  and  heavy  and 
the  turf  was  black  and  sodden.  They  passed  a  cottage,  an 
ill-built  miserable  affair.  The  walls  had  not  been  white- 
washed for  months  and  they  were  splotched  and  mouldy. 
The  unhealthy  looking  roof  of  rotting  thatch  was  caved  in. 
Ruinous  out-houses  had  been  dropped  about  it  anyhow. 
There  was  a  large  dunghill  close  to  the  doorway,  whose 


WAR  383 

brown,  stinking  drainage  puddled  the  yard  and  the  adjacent 
roadway. 

"  Habitation  of  a  citizen  of  the  British  Empire,"  saia 
Stephen.  "  The  son  of  the  house  has  gone  to  fight  for 
civilization  etcetera  when  he'd  be  much  better  employed  in 
making  this  little  spot  fit  for  a  civilized  man  to  live  in. 
.  .  .  Good-morning,  Mr.  Dolan,  how  are  things?" 

This  was  addressed  to  an  old  man  smoking  a  foul  clay 
pipe  who  appeared  at  the  half  door  at  this  minute. 

"  Ah,  sure  they  might  be  better,  glory  be  to  God.  An' 
how's  yourself  ?  " 

"  Couldn't  be  better,   thanks.     Any   news  of   Barney  ?  " 

"  He's  not  at  the  front  yet,  thank  God.  But  he  soon 
will  be.  ...  These  is  terrible  times,  Mr.  Stephen." 

"  Terrible,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Will  we  be  seein'  Home  Rule  soon  at  all,  do  ye  think?  " 

"  We  will  not,  Mr.  Dolan,  and  that's  my  honest  opinion." 

"  Glory  be  to  God,  an'  what  are  all  the  boys  goin'  to  the 
war  for?  " 

"  God  knows,  Mr.  Dolan." 

"  'Tis  a  terrible  thing  us  to  be  losing  our  young  men  and 
no  showin'  for  it." 

"  It  is  that,  Mr.  Dolan,  and  you  can  thank  your  leaders 
for  it." 

"  Sure  I  felt  that  all  along,  but  musha,  what  can  you  do?  " 

"  You're  a  Sinn  Feiner,  Mr.  Dolan,"  said  Stephen. 

"  I  am  not,"  said  the  old  man,  angrily. 

Stephen  hastily  changed  the  subject. 

"  What's  wrong  with  your  hens?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  think  it's  the  cholera  they've  got." 

"  How  did  they  manage  to  get  that?  " 

"  Faith,  I  dunno  .  .  .  unless  it's  from  pickin'  in  the  dung- 
heap  there." 

"  Why  don't  you  rail  it  in  then?  " 

"  Sure  it  mightn't  be  that  at  all." 

"  Well,  we'll  be  going  on.     Good-bye,  Dolan," 

"  Good-bye,  Misther  Stephen," 


384  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  See  that,"  said  Stephen  to  Bernard  as  they  passed  on. 
"  No  Imperial  thinking  there.  The  heart  or  the  people  is 
sound  at  bottom,  even  if  loyalty  to  their  leaders  leads  them 
astray  superficially." 

"  Rubbishy  remark  that  of  Juliet's  about  What's  in  a 
Name,"  said  Bernard.  "  That  man  obviously  believes  in 
independence,  yet  he  objects  to  being  called  a  Sinn  Feiner." 

The  road  swung  out  on  to  the  open  bog. 

"  These  bogs  are  playing  the  devil  with  out  national  char- 
acter," said  Stephen.  "  They  enervate  the  whole  atmos- 
phere. That's  why  we're  what  we  are:  a  lazy,  inefficient 
people.  We  think  everything  worth  doing,  and  nothing 
worth  doing  well.  Look  at  that  man  with  his  hens.  And 
he's  not  the  only  fool  like  that  in  Ireland.  Nearly  every 
cottage  in  the  country  has  its  dung-hill  at  the  front  door, 
and  its  drainage  going  to  waste  and  being  a  nuisance." 

"  How  little  sense  of  beauty  they  have,"  said  Bernard. 
"  Those  awful  out-houses !  And  the  makeshifts  they  have 
everywhere  for  gates:  bits  of  old  bedsteads  and  the  like." 

"  Due  to  history,"  said  Stephen.  "  In  the  old  days  your 
rent  was  put  up  if  you  had  a  geranium  in  your  window,  so 
the  habit  of  the  poor  mouth  grew  up  and  sticks  to  them 
still." 

"  How  very  uncouth  in  their  habits  our  people  are,"  said 
Bernard.  "  What  a  pity  they  don't  adopt  the  continental 
habit  of  wearing  blouses  at  their  work.  How  gross  their 
family  life  is  when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  with  the  men 
coming  home  in  their  dirty  working  clothes.  We'll  need  to 
restore  civilization  in  this  country  when  we've  got  our 
freedom." 

Stephen  told  Bernard  about  all  his  reconstructive  projects: 
the  improvement  of  agriculture,  the  construction  of  a  mer- 
cantile marine,  the  development  of  fisheries;  the  completion 
of  the  canal  system  begun  by  the  Irish  Parliament  of  1782 
and  cut  short  by  the  Union ;  afforestation ;  industrial  de- 
velopment and  utilization  of  mines  and  other  natural  re- 
sources; and  finally  a  complete  reorganization  of  education. 


WAR  385 

Bernard,  if  the  truth  must  be  told,  did  not  listen  very  at- 
tentively. The  image  of  Mabel  was  disconcertingly  promi- 
nent in  his  thoughts;  it  hovered  before  him  in  the  daytime 
and  came  to  him  in  his  dreams  at  night.  He  dwelt  upon 
the  image  with  pleasure  when  it  came,  and  even  conjured  it 
up  deliberately  in  idle  moments. 

And  she  had  written  to  him.  In  his  pocket  was  a  letter 
he  had  received  that  morning.  She  was  going  to  a  dance  at 
the  Gresham  on  New  Year's  Eve,  she  said.  Would  he  be 
back  in  time  for  it?  Inly  he  swore  that  he  would  and  was 
even  now  casting  about  for  excuses  to  shorten  his  stay  at 
Glencoole. 

"  Then  the  army  in  a  free  Ireland,"  went  on  Stephen, 
"  wouldn't  be  an  unproductive  service  like  in  other  countries. 
I'd  employ  the  soldiers  on  national  work  —  reclaiming  of 
bogs,  afforestation,  and  what  not.  ...  I  wouldn't  keep 
them  in  barracks  either:  they'd  live  in  specially  built  military 
villages  with  their  wives  and  children  —  the  villages  to  be 
modelled,  more  or  less,  on  ancient  Sparta.  .  .  .  Suppose  I 
wanted  to  reclaim  this  bog  here  for  example.  I'd  run  up  a 
village  quickly  on  that  firm  patch  over  there,  and  camp  a 
regiment  there  till  the  work  was  finished.  ...  By  this 
means  we  could  keep  up  a  far  larger  standing  army  than  we 
could  otherwise  afford.  And  we'd  need  it,  too,  with  the 
world  the  way  it  is." 

They  got  on  to  the  question  of  education  for  a  while. 
Stephen  insisted  upon  the  necessity  of  a  philosophic  basis  for 
education. 

"  Modern  education,"  he  said,  "  teaches  too  many  facts 
(and  too  many  lies  also)  and  makes  no  attempt  to  get  people 
to  think  .  .  .  That's  why  men  are  so  easily  deceived  and 
imposed  upon.  .  .  .  That's  why  this  war's  going  on  today. 
.  .  .  Lack  of  thought,  incapacity  for  deduction,  that's  what 
does  it." 

Bernard  was  more  concerned  with  organization  than  with 
the  curriculum.  He  revealed  to  Stephen  the  horrors  of  the 
Public  School  system  as  he  had  known  it. 


386  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Let's  have  no  big  schools,"  he  said.  "  Boys'  schools 
should  be  divided  into  three  classes :  Primary,  for  those  under 
ten,  secondary7  for  those  from  eleven  to  fourteen,  and  tertiary 
for  those  from  fifteen  to  seventeen.  Let  there  be  plenty  of 
widely-distributed  primary  and  secondary  schools,  and  let 
none  of  them  be  boarding-schools.  The  tertiary  can  be 
boarding  or  day  as  you  like,  but  young  boys  become  savages 
if  they're  separated  from  their  mothers  and  sisters." 

Thus  disjointedly  and  at  haphazard  as  they  wandered 
about  the  neighbourhood  of  Glencoole  they  discussed  their 
plans  and  projects.  Sweeping  projects  they  were:  broad  in 
outline,  but  lacking  in  detail:  rather  absurd  some  of  them: 
but  all  honest  and  disinterested :  young  men's  plans.  .  .  . 
And  always  at  the  very  height  of  their  enthusiasm  they 
would  be  pulled  up  by  the  melancholy  reflection  that  the  first 
step,  the  very  essential  to  making  any  attempt  to  realize  their 
dreams,  was  yet  unaccomplished.  The  shadow  of  the  occu- 
pation still  lay  over  everything;  and  their  own  countrymen 
were  still  hostile  to  them  and  seemingly  content  to  rest  in 
its  obscurity. 

New  Year's  Eve  approached,  and  Bernard  felt  his  longing 
for  Mabel  growing  irresistible.  To  dance  with  her  would 
be  joy  supreme.  To  spend  a  whole  evening,  perhaps,  in  her 
company.  ...  His  hopes  were  ecstatic. 

"  Look  here,  old  chap,"  he  said  to  Stephen,  "  I'm  afraid 
I  must  leave  tomorrow.  There's  a  patient  I  can't  put 
off  ..." 

And  Stephen  knew  he  was  lying,  and  was  thankful  to  be 
exempted  from  the  tender  emotions. 

13 

The  ball-room  was  ablaze  with  lights  and  garlands,  the 
air  throbbed  writh  music,  and  the  floor  was  slippery  as  ice. 
Bernard  had  come  early,  and  prowled  about  with  impatience 
gnawing  at  his  heart,  looking  out  for  Mabel's  arrival.  Girls 
he  knew  looked  in  his  direction  expecting  to  be  asked  for 
dances,  but  he  pretended  not  to  see  them.  He  had  two 


WAR  387 

empty    programs    in    the    pocket    of    his    pique    waistcoat. 

Mabel  was  late. 

"  That  cursed  dawdling  brother  of  hers!  "  muttered  Ber- 
nard, savagely,  to  himself. 

The  first  dance  was  well  under  way  when  she  appeared, 
a  dainty  fairy-like  figure  clad  in  white  net  with  a  pink  waist- 
band, the  light  gleaming  in  her  hair. 

"  I  thought  you  were  never  coming,"  he  said.  "  Here's 
a  program  for  you,"  and  he  handed  her  the  fellow  of  his 
own. 

"  Where  are  they  to  be  had  ?  "  asked  Jack,  whereat  Ber- 
nard gave  him  directions  and  they  were  rid  of  him. 

"Well,  how  many  may  I  have?"  asked  Bernard. 

"  How  many  do  you  want?  "  she  replied. 

"  I  daren't  ask  for  that  many,"  he  said. 

"  They  get  nothing  who  don't  dare,"  said  she. 

"  God  help  me  "  said  he. 

"  Be  brave,"  said  she. 

"  But  I  want  such  a  lot.  ..." 

"  Here's  Jack  coming  back." 

"  I  want  them  all,"  he  said,  desperately. 

"  That's  a  large  order,"  she  said,  and  his  face  fell. 

"  That's  my  maximum  demand,"  he  said.  "  You  can 
make  your  deductions  from  it." 

"  Well,  I've  promised  Jack  two,  and  I  must  keep  six  for 
duty  dances.  .  .  .  You  can  have  the  rest." 

With  trembling  fingers  he  marked  off  the  dances  on  both 
programs. 

"  How  am  I  to  remember  who  X  is?  "  she  asked. 

The  air  was  suddenly  rent  by  the  opening  chords  of  a 
wild  ragtime  tune,  and  in  a  minute  he  was  swinging  her  over 
the  hyaline  floor.  She  danced  well:  too  well.  She  seemed 
to  have  no  volition  of  her  own,  and  melting  into  his  arms 
responded  automatically  to  every  movement  of  his.  The  mad 
ragtime  strain,  with  its  fierce  dissonances  and  breathless  syn- 
copation, surged  through  him  stirring  his  blood  and  thrilling 
his  nerves  with  a  vivifying  current  of  electricity.  Wild 


388  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

imaginings  passed  through  his  brain,  and  all  that  was  primi- 
tive in  him  leaped  to  the  surface.  He  abandoned  himself 
to  the  sheer  joy  of  dancing.  His  limbs  seemed  tireless.  He 
felt  as  if  he  could  go  on  like  that  forever. 

And  then  abruptly  the  dance  came  to  an  end  and  Mabel 
was  fanning  herself  and  praising  the  floor.  The  next  dance 
was  promised  to  Jack  and  Bernard  retired  to  soothe  his  im- 
patience with  a  cigarette  in  the  dressing-room.  Here  he  was 
in  no  way  surprised  to  meet  Molloy,  who  was  an  habitue 
of  the  Gresham. 

"Hello!"  said  Bernard.  "I  thought  you  were  at  the 
Front." 

"  I  haven't  time,"  said  Molloy.  "  I'm  frightfully  busy 
at  present.  I've  three  or  four  of  these  sedition  cases  coming 
up  shortly.  .  .  .  I'm  defending  the  blighters,  too,  though 
personally  I'd  like  to  see  them  all  dumped  in  the  Liffey. 
...  I  say,  I  saw  you  dancing  with  a  damn  pretty  girl  just 
now.  You  might  give  me  an  intro  ?  .  .  .  " 

Languid  waltz  and  vivid  one-step  alternating,  the  evening 
sped  by.  Bernard  and  Mabel  sat  out  most  of  the  second 
part  of  the  program,  and  talked.  They  talked  about  every- 
thing—  and  themselves:  but  chiefly  about  themselves.  He 
told  her  things  that  he  had  never  told  anyone  else.  He  told 
her  about  the  nursery  Babylon  and  his  imaginary  island. 
She  told  him  about  her  home  life  and  her  dreary  work. 
They  had  become  confidants  .  .  . 

"  Which  do  you  like  best,  the  waltz  or  the  one-step  ?  " 
she  asked,  suddenly. 

"  The  one-step,  I  think,"  replied  Bernard.  "  I  like  the 
frank  savagery  of  it.  It  puts  the  devil  into  you:  rips  the 
wrappings  of  civilization  off  you  and  turns  the  ball-room 
into  a  battlefield  where  you  carry  off  your  bride  like  a  primi- 
tive skin-clad  man." 

"Hmph!  ...  I  prefer  the  waltz.  It  makes  you  fall 
asleep  on  life  and  dream  of  operas  and  scenes  in  books." 

They  were  silent  awhile,  and  then  Mabel  said: 


WAR  389 

"  What  a  lovely  night!  " 

"  I've  never  had  such  a  night  before,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Nor  I." 

;< '  On  such  a  night/  "  Bernard  quoted,  "  '  Troilus  me- 
thinks  .  .  .  ' 

"  Try  a  new  one,"  said  Mabel. 

"  Hm,  let's  see  ...  On  such  a  night  Tristan  methinks, 
with  cheeks  incarnadined  And  beating  heart,  first  looked 
into  the  eyes  Of  Mark's  intended  in  the  spacious  halls  Of 
Chapelizod." 

"  Hear !  Hear !  .  .  .  let's  try  and  out-night  you.  .  .  . 
On  such  a  night  Giulietta  in  a  mirror  caught  The  soul  of 
Hoffmann." 

"  On  such  a  night  Cyrano's  nose  did  blush  amid  the  verse 
Wafted  towards  Roxane's  window." 

"  On  such  a  night  Stood  Tessa  weeping  by  the  Grand 
Canal,  And  uttered  messages  to  birds  a-wing  For  Barataria." 

"  On  such  a  night  Giuseppe  lilted  like  a  love-sick  boy  Of 
sparkling  eyes  to  Marco." 

"  On  such  a  night  I  feel  like  having  an  ice.  Come  down 
and  get  me  one." 

"  You're  some  poet,"  said  Bernard  on  the  way  down. 

"  I  did  The  Merchant  for  the  Intermediate  my  last  year 
at  school." 

"  Don't  spoil  it  all,"  said  Bernard. 

They  went  to  the  ball-room  and  had  another  dance:  a 
waltz  to  the  tune  of  Come  Back  to  Erin.  When  it  was  over 
they  tacitly  returned  to  their  former  nook.  They  had  so 
much  to  say  that  dancing  seemed  an  irritating  interrup- 
tion .  .  . 

An  hour  went  by  thus;  and  then  Bernard  said: 

"  We  must  preserve  that  poem  of  ours.  Let's  write  it 
down  before  we  forget  it." 

He  started  to  scribble  on  the  back  of  his  program,  she 
looking  over  his  shoulder  the  while.  Intoxicating  presence! 
It  distracted  his  memory  and  she  had  to  prompt  him  fre- 


390  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

quently.  Their  heads  were  very  close  together,  and  a  strand 
of  her  hair  tickled  him.  Then,  when  the  task  was  done, 
Mabel  wanted  to  dance  again. 

"  It  must  be  nearly  the  last  dance,"  she  said,  and  they 
rose  from  their  shelter  to  go  downstairs.  As  they  faced 
each  other  for  a  moment  a  wave  of  passion  swept  over  Ber- 
nard. He  found  himself  stammering  uncontrollably. 

"  Mabel  ..."  he  said,  and  stopped,  tongue-tied. 

She  looked  up  at  him  timidly. 

"  Dear!  "  he  ventured. 

She  seemed  to  shrink  from  him  for  a  second,  and  then  she 
was  in  his  arms  and  submitting  languorously  to  his  kisses. 

The  last  waltz  saw  them  not. 


He  awoke  next  morning  to  find  Swathythe  by  his  bedside. 

"  It  can't  be  ten  yet,  Swathythe,"  said  Bernard,  sleepily. 

"  No,  sir,  but  ...  " 

"  Well  go  away  and  don't  disturb  me.  Didn't  I  tell  you 
not  to  call  me  till  ten  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir,  but  I  thought  ..." 

"  You'd  no  business  to  think,  Swathythe." 

"  Mr.  Ward  has  been   arrested,  sir.     I   thought  ..." 

Wide  awake  at  once  Bernard  sprang  out  of  bed.  Swa- 
thythe respectfully  handed  him  a  newspaper. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

AN   AMATEUR   ARMY 


MRS.  HARVEY  was  somewhat  taken  aback  when  Ber- 
nard and  Mabel  came  to  tell  her  of  their  engagement. 
Mabel,  the  beauty  of  the  family,  was  expected  to  make  a 
match  which  would  restore  their  fallen  fortunes;  she  knew 
it,  and  so  had  kept  her  affair  with  Bernard  a  secret.  The 
revelation  was,  therefore,  an  unpleasant  surprise  to  Mrs. 
Harvey,  but  she  recovered  her  equanimity  in  time  to  avoid 
betraying  herself. 

"  You're  a  rash  pair  of  children,"  she  said.  "  Well, 
God  bless  you.  May  you  be  happy."  And  she  expressed  a 
desire  to  have  a  chat  with  Bernard. 

He  called  on  her  a  few  days  later  when  Mabel  was  away 
at  her  work,  and  in  a  short  time  she  was  pretty  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  his  financial  position. 

"  And  now,"  she  said,  "  I've  one  piece  of  motherly  advice 
for  you.  You  take  far  too  much  interest  in  politics.  Steer 
clear  of  it,  or  you'll  never  get  on  in  your  profession." 

"  If  Washington  had  taken  that  advice  America  wouldn't 
now  be  free,"  sair  Bernard. 

"  Perhaps,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey,  serenely.  "  But  Wash- 
ington wasn't  a  suitor  for  my  daughter."  Which  bowled 
Bernard  over  completely. 

Mrs.  Harvey  was  less  pleased  than  ever  with  the  prospect 
of  the  marriage,  not  for  her  daughter's  sake,  but  for  her  own. 
Bernard  and  Mabel  could,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  have  married 
quite  comfortably  by  the  end  of  the  year,  but  that  would  not 
have  satisfied  Mrs.  Harvey's  requirements  at  all.  She  was 
tired  (and  no  wonder)  of  her  present  toilsome  life,  and 
wished  to  become  a  lady  of  leisure  once  more.  Her  daugh- 
391 


392  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

ters,  therefore,  would  have  to  look  for  husbands  who  would 
be  wealthy  enough  to  compensate  her  handsomely  for  the 
loss  of  their  earnings,  and  as  Bernard  was  not  rich,  nor, 
owing  to  his  infatuation  with  a  very  lost  cause  in  politics 
ever  likely  to  be  so,  he  was  a  very  undesirable  son-in-law 
from  Mrs.  Harvey's  point  of  view.  Moreover,  there  was 
a  certain  social  stigma  associated  with  a  party  whose 
adherents  so  frequently  found  themselves  in  gaol  (where 
Bernard  might  be  landed  any  day  himself)  and  as  Mrs. 
Harvey's  insatiable  ambition  was  to  regain  that  social  status 
which  she  had  lost,  her  chagrin  at  her  daughter's  choice  can 
well  be  imagined.  She  was  not,  however,  so  foolish  as  to 
oppose  it  openly.  Mabel,  she  knew,  was  not  a  girl  of  par- 
ticularly strong  character,  but  she  was  proud  and  could  be 
far  more  easily  led  than  driven,  more  potently  influenced  by 
ridicule  than  by  force.  For  the  present,  therefore,  Mrs. 
Harvey  bided  her  time,  and,  while  outwardly  she  blessed  the 
engagement,  she  set  herself  to  the  discovery  of  a  more  desir- 
able rival,  contenting  herself,  meanwhile,  with  stray  dis- 
paraging remarks  about  Bernard  —  his  seriousness,  his  un- 
tidiness, and  so  on  —  with  occasional  reflections  on  the  com- 
forts of  wealth,  fervent  hopes  that  Bernard  would  attain  it, 
and  despondent  prophecies  that  this  was  very  unlikely. 

This  policy  Mabel  treated  at  first  with  indifference,  but 
gradually  she  became  uneasy  and  communicated  her  fears  to 
Bernard.  He,  however,  only  laughed,  and  said  her  mother 
was  over-anxious  about  her  happiness. 

"Cheer  up,"  he  said.  "The  spring  is  coming:  you  can 
feel  it  in  the  air.  I'll  work  like  a  nigger  now,  and  then 
in  the  summer,  perhaps.  .  .  .  Meanwhile,  we  have  our  Sat- 
urdays and  Sundays  and  our  evenings  together,  so  don't 
be  downhearted.  .  .  .  And,  dear,  who  knows  but  Ireland 
may  be  free  by  our  wedding-day.  The  tide  is  turning 
already." 

The  anger  and  despair  and  bitter  laughter  that  had  tor- 
tured Bernard  through  the  winter  had  not  been  ousted  from 
his  soul  by  love:  requited  love,  however,  now  distracted  him, 


\N  AMATEUR  ARMY  393 

and  simultaneously  hope  began  to  revive  at  sight  of  the 
already  changing  attitude  of  the  people.  Hostility  towards 
the  Volunteers  was  still  strong,  and  still  widely  spread,  but 
it  was  no  longer  uncompromising,  and  it  was  narrowing  in 
scope.  Even  those  who  strongly  disagreed  with  them  recog- 
nized that  they  had  a  case  and  that  it  could  not  be  contro- 
verted by  mere  abuse.  .  .  .  They  were  seldom  called  traitors 
now,  though  names  like  "  factionists  "  and  "  cranks  "  were 
still  flung  at  them. 

These  were  Spring  days  and  it  was  good  to  live  and  love. 
He  took  Mabel  for  long  walks :  out  to  Howth ;  up  the  Three 
Rock,  through  the  Glen  of  the  Downs.  One  breezy,  sunny 
day  they  climbed  to  the  Hell-Fire  Chib.  They  raced  each 
other  up  the  grassy  gorse-clad  slope  of  Mount  Pelier,  and 
arriving  breathless  at  the  top  were  nearly  blown  to  pieces  by 
the  wind.  The  gusts  hurtled  and  shrieked  round  the  rough 
stone  wralls  of  the  naked  ruin  and  in  and  out  of  its  bleak 
chambers.  Bernard  tore  off  his  cap  and  let  the  wind  ruffle 
his  hair  and  rattle  his  unbuttoned  rain-coat  with  a  noise  of 
rending  cloth. 

"  Isn't  it  glorious,"  he  said,  joyously  inhaling  the  ex- 
hilarating fluid. 

"  I'm  so  cold,"  said  Mabel,  and  drew  him  into  the  lee  of 
the  building,  pulling  his  arm  round  her  for  comfort.  They 
seemed  lapped  in  a  magic  silence  now  after  the  turmoil 
outside. 

"  What  a  sight  I  am,"  exclaimed  Mabel,  adjusting  her 
hair  by  the  help  of  a  pocket  mirror. 

"  You  look  your  best  untidy,"  said  he. 

"  Go  away !  "  she  laughed  and  added,  "  You're  a  perfect 
sketch  yourself." 

"  What  ho  for  a  hot  cup  of  tea?  "  said  Bernard,  and  they 
ran  down  the  sheltered  hill  hand  in  hand. 

"  If  anyone  saw  us,"  remonstrated  Mabel. 

They  walked  along  the  Velvet  Strand  another  day  from 
Portmarnock  to  Malahide,  a  great  deserted  stretch  of  beach 
at  that  season. 


394  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  What  a  dull  spot,"  said  Mabel. 

"  Is  it  bathing-machines  and  nursery  maids  you'd  like  to 
see?"  asked  Bernard. 

"  I  don't  like  this  loneliness,"  she  said,  holding  his  arm 
closer. 

They  stood  listening  to  the  thud  and  jingle  of  the  breaking 
and  retreating  waves,  while  the  wind  whistled  in  the  bent- 
grass  on  the  sand  dunes  behind  them.  Sky  and  sea  were 
grey  and  mournful.  The  air  was  scented  with  brine  and 
sea-weed.  They  let  the  wind  sweep  them  at  a  run  along 
the  hard  crinkled  sand,  crunching  sea-shells  under  their  feet. 

They  reached  the  road  winding  above  the  rocks  towards 
Malahide. 

"  Don't  you  love  that  sound?  "  said  Bernard,  stopping  to 
listen  to  the  sighing  hum  of  the  wind  in  the  telegraph  wires, 
mixed  now  with  the  plashing  sound  of  the  waves  chopping 
among  the  rocks. 

"  What  wild,  weird  things  you  take  pleasure  in !  "  said 
Mabel. 

"  You're  not  wild  and  weird,  are  you?"  asked  Bernard. 

"  I  soon  will  be  if  I  associate  much  with  you." 

"  Well,  if  you're  afraid  ..." 

"Silly!"  said  Mabel. 

Sometimes  they  had  no  time  for  walks  like  these  and 
contented  themselves  with  a  stroll  in  Stephen's  Green,  calm 
oasis  in  the  noisy  city,  or  they  would  walk  out  to  the  Phoenix 
Park,  or  along  the  Canal  side,  or  suburban  avenues,  or  even 
the  less  frequented  city  streets. 

"  The  glorious  dust ! "  says  Bernard,  as  they  emerge 
blinking  from  a  cloud  of  it,  a  swarm  of  sharp  specks  that 
prick  their  skin  as  it  drives  before  the  blast  and  passes  on 
with  a  rasp  of  withered  leaves  slithering  along  the  pavement. 

"Horrid  stuff!"  says  Mabel.     "I'm  half  blinded." 

"  A  peck  of  March  dust  is  worth  a  ton  of  tonics." 

"  Thank  you.       I  can  dispense  with  both." 

"  You  don't  like  anything  I  like." 

"  You  like  all  sorts  of  queer  things  better  than  me." 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  395 

"Mabel!" 

"  Yes,  you  do." 

"  You're  cruel,  dear." 

She  laughs,  and  immediately  repents. 

"  Don't  mind  me,  old  boy.  I  never  mean  half  what  I 
say^.  .  .  " 

"  Jack,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey  to  her  son  that  same  day, 
"  next  time  you're  in  town  on  leave  I  wish  you'd  bring  up 
one  of  your  friends  with  you.  .  .  .  Some  nice  young  officer 
with  money,  you  know.  .  .  .  Brothers  ought  to  do  those 
things  for  their  sisters." 


Meanwhile,  Stephen  was  in  gaol. 

He  took  the  whole  thing  in  his  habitual  philosophic  way: 
nothing  ever  seemed  to  disturb  the  equanimity  of  this  taci- 
turn young  mountaineer.  While  he  was  awaiting  trial  his 
father  came  to  see  him  (it  was  the  old  man's  first  visit  to  the 
city  for  more  than  quarter  of  a  century)  and  shed  tears  in 
the  visitor's  cage,  for  which  his  son  sternly  rebuked  him. 
At  the  court-martial  Stephen  made  no  defence :  he  maintained 
a  dignified  silence  throughout  the  whole  procedure,  which 
apparently  concerned  him  not  in  the  slightest,  nor  did  he 
seem  to  hear  the  sentence  of  three  months'  imprisonment 
which  was  passed  on  him.  .  .  .  Mentally,  he  was  resolving 
that  those  months  should  not  be  wasted  months. 

So  when  he  was  locked  in  his  cell  he  wasted  no  time 
repining  over  the  inevitable.  After  a  brief  survey  of  the 
narrow  bare  apartment,  he  took  up  the  Bible  which  lay  on 
the  shelf  near  the  door  and  read,  most  of  it  for  the  first  time, 
the  Old  Testament. 

"  Imperialism  skilfully  mixed  with  religion,"  was  his  com- 
ment as,  after  reading  as  far  as  Joshua,  he  stretched  himself 
on  his  plank  bed  for  the  night.  "  Well,  well.  They  say 
there's  nothing  new  under  the  sun." 

In  spite  of  the  hardness  of  his  couch  he  slept  soundly. 

In  the  morning  he  awoke  to  the  monotonous  regularity 


396  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

of  prison  life.  He  took  the  successive  events  as  they  came 
and  made  the  best  of  them.  Breakfast  was  a  coarse,  un- 
appetizing meal  consisting  of  sour  bread  and  milkless,  un- 
sweetened cocoa.  Skilly  and  potatoes  were  the  variants  in 
other  meals:  meagre  unsavoury  sustenance,  but  he  devoured 
it  healthily  and  complained  only  of  its  insufficiency.  In  his 
hour  of  exercise  he  trod  the  prison  yard  vigorously,  taking 
great  breaths  of  air,  and  planting  his  feet  down  hard  and 
firmly.  He  was  set  to  the  task  of  chopping  wood,  and  he 
chopped  skilfully,  taking  pleasure  in  the  work.  He  cleaned 
his  cell  with  the  zest  one  gives  to  a  work  of  art.  He  bur- 
nished his  tin  mug  till  it  shone  like  silver.  In  the  exercise 
yard  he  gathered  dandelion  leaves  to  flavour  his  dinner.  .  .  . 
By  such  mitigations  he  made  life  tolerable. 

For  an  hour  in  the  mornings,  when  the  day  was  fine,  the 
sun  shining  through  his  window  painted  a  golden  square  on 
the  opposite  wall,  and  Stephen  used  to  place  himself  so  as 
to  intercept  the  beam  that  traversed  the  cell.  By  standing 
on  his  stool  he  could  plunge  head  and  shoulders  into  the 
life  giving  ray,  made  to  seem  almost  substantial  by  the  dust 
particles  that  danced  within  it,  and  breathe  in  warmth  and 
nourishment.  .  .  . 

Sunday  Mass  was  a  respite  amid  rigour.  Assisting  at  the 
holy  sacrifice  he  could  forget  he  was  a  captive  in  the  sublim- 
ity of  the  occasion,  in  the  feeling  that  his  spirit  was  in  com- 
munion with  all  the  worshippers  attending  the  same  cere- 
mony at  the  same  time  all  over  the  world.  Wondrous  rite 
common  to  all  men,  friends  and  foes,  bond  and  free !  Sacri- 
fice offered  perpetually  in  the  same  manner  and  in  the  same 
tongue  by  warring  and  allied  peoples ;  in  prisons  and  palaces, 
in  chapel  and  cathedral,  on  ships  at  sea,  on  rude  altars  in  the 
open  air  under  savage  skies.  Intimate  consolation  of  the 
single  soul;  potent  unifier  of  mankind. 

"  If  our  International  doctrinaires  could  be  induced  to 
come  to  Mass  ..."  thought  Stephen. 

"  Thank  God,  I'm  a  Catholic,  not  a  piping  little  protester 
whose  creed  is  unknown  beyond  his  own  doorstep.  .  .  . 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  397 

What  fools  were  those  men  who  rejected  their  share  in  the 
one  common  possession  of  Europe  ..." 

He  had  plenty  of  time  for  thought  in  the  long  hours  he 
spent  locked  in  his  cell.  He  revised  his  whole  philosophy 
and  found  it  unaltered.  He  was  filled  with  exultation  at 
realizing  how  hard  the  universal  battle  between  light  and 
darkness  was  being  fought.  His  faith  was  confirmed. 

He  read  also.  The  prison  library  was  a  poor  one,  but  he 
extracted  value  from  it.  On  the  second  day  of  his  cap- 
tivity the  librarian,  going  the  rounds  with  his  basket  of  books, 
tossed  a  volume  into  the  cell,  which  Stephen  hastened  to  pick 
up.  It  was  a  very  soiled  and  battered  Third  School  Reader, 
published  by  an  English  educational  firm.  Disappointed 
though  he  was,  Stephen  started  to  read  it.  The  first  lesson 
was  an  essay  on  the  ant,  which  was  more  concerned  to  point 
a  moral  than  to  be  accurate  in  natural  history.  This  was 
followed  by  a  story  about  a  boy,  a  nobleman  and  a  cow, 
brought  together  to  illustrate  the  profitableness  of  honesty 
as  a  business  policy.  Then  came  the  highly  edifying  story  of 
the  painter  who  found  in  the  same  person  at  different  ages 
the  models  for  his  pictures  Innocence  and  Guilt.  Four  tales 
had  for  their  themes  different  phases  of  England's  career  of 
world  conquest,  and  Freedom  was  patronized  by  the  stories 
of  two  men  who  had  fought  against  conquest  by  countries 
other  than  England:  Hofer  and  Kosciusko.  Two  poems, 
Excelsior  and  Ye  Mariners  of  England,  together  with  the 
most  priggish  of  old  Aesop's  fables,  completed  the  collection. 

The  book  was  a  revelation  to  Stephen.  It  showed  him 
the  mould  in  which  the  English  mind  was  cast. 

"  No  wonder  they  are  what  they  are,"  he  reflected,  "  if 
this  is  the  kind  of  thing  they're  brought  up  on." 

He  saw  English  Imperialism  at  its  source:  commercial 
morality  ("  Be  good  and  you  shall  prosper")  ;  the  natural 
deduction  therefrom  ("We  prosper,  therefore  we  are 
good  ")  ;  and  that  sublime  assurance  which  sets  aside  as 
perverse  the  views  of  other  people  about  their  private  con- 
cerns when  those  views  fail  to  recognize  that  the  highest 


398  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

morality  is  to  aim  directly  at  promoting  England's  pros- 
perity .  .  . 

He  remembered  that  Bernard  had  once  told  him  that  the 
average  Englishman  really  believes  that  to  be  governed  by 
England  is  freedom,  and  more. 

"  Why,"  he  thought,  "  the  Irish  lie  is  bad  enough,  but 
it's  a  pleasant,  harmless  lie  that  hurts  no  one  but  ourselves, 
and  it's  a  white,  shining  truth  beside  the  English  lie." 

He  began  to  speculate  upon  the  war. 

"  Perhaps  on  every  side  the  truth  is  fighting  with  the  lie: 
the  French  and  English  truth  fighting  the  German  lie;  the 
German  truth  fighting  the  French  and  English  lies  .  .  . 

"  But  it  achieves  nothing  but  material  destruction  .  .  . 

"  No.  Metaphysical  half-truths  won't  carry  us  very  far. 
.  .  .  Secret  diplomacy  is  only  too  evidently  the  cause. 

"  The  whole  thing  is  wasted  effort.  There's  no  national 
truth  at  stake  at  all  ... 

"  Why  not  set  the  universal  truth  to  tackle  the  ubiquitous 
lie?  ...  More  metaphysics!  .  .  ." 

He  began  to  feel  that  the  conquest  was  not  for  Ireland 
an  unmixed  evil. 

"  If  we'd  never  been  conquered  we'd  now  be  a  great 
power  .  .  .  with  foreign  possessions  ...  a  slice  of  Africa 
perhaps,  and  some  Pacific  Islands.  .  .  .  Bearers  of  the  white 
man's  burden  —  and  curses.  We'd  be  thinking  on  lines  like 
this  ..." 

He  flung  the  Third  School  Reader  from  him. 

"  It's  better  as  it  is.  When  we're  free  we'll  be  a  small 
nation  like  Switzerland,  Bulgaria,  or  Norway  .  .  .  sensible 
onlookers  at  the  European  tragi-comedy  ...  a  people  in 
good  training,  not  bloated  degenerate  giants  like  the  great 
Powers  ..." 

The  next  book  they  gave  him  was  Reade's  Foul  Play, 
but  Stephen  cared  nothing  for  novels,  so  he  asked  to  have 
it  changed,  and  they  gave  him  a  School  History  of  England. 
After  that  he  was  given  a  very  dilapidated  Hamlet,  and  now 
he  was  happy.  True,  the  version  had  been  barbarously 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  399 

bowdlerized  by  a  Protestant  clergyman  in  order  to  make  it 
"  fit  for  the  home  circle."  Not  only  was  it  purged  of  all 
grossness,  but  even  such  words  as  "  damned  "  and  "  bloody  " 
were  replaced  by  softer  epithets:  Horatio  swore  that  he 
would  "  cross  "  the  ghost  "  though  it  slay  "  him,  and  the 
speech  in  which  Hamlet  unpacked  his  heart  with  words 
and  fell  a-cursing  like  a  very  drab  could  not  have  brought 
the  blush  of  shame  to  the  cheek  of  modesty.  Still  it  was 
Hamlet  all  the  same,  that  wonderful  poem,  ever  familiar, 
yet  ever  startling  those  who  think  they  have  plumbed  its 
depths  with  some  fresh  undiscovered  beauty  or  subtlety. 
Stephen's  taste  favoured  rant,  probably  because  his  own 
manner  was  the  reverse,  and  he  spouted  to  the  echoing  walls 
of  his  cell  things  like: 

And  thus  o'ersized  with  coagulate  gore, 
With  eyes  like  carbuncles,  the  hellish  Pyrrhus 
Old  grandsire  Priam  seeks, 

and: 

Let  them  throw 

Millions  of  acres  on  us,  till  our  ground, 
Singeing  his  pate  against  the  burning  zone, 
Make  Ossa  like  a  wart. 

He  fell  to  thinking,  ever  and  again,  over  the  question  of 
the  punishment  and  prevention  of  crime. 

"What  good  could  jailing  do  anybody?"  he  asked  him- 
self. "  Can  spending  twenty-three  hours  of  the  day  locked 
up  by  yourself  and  getting  bad  and  insufficient  food  improve 
any  one's  character,  let  alone  a  weak  one?  .  .  .  But  a 
comfortable  jail  would  be  no  deterrent.  .  .  .  Nonsense. 
In  a  properly-run  state  loss  of  liberty  would  be  enough 
punishment  and  deterrent  for  anybody.  It's  poverty  makes 
jailbirds.  .  .  .  What  sort  of  prisons  shall  we  have  under 
the  Republic?" 

The  problem  occupied  him  for  days. 

"  No  good,"  he  said  at  last.     "  Atmosphere  isn't  suited 


400  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

to  constructive  thinking.  .  .  .  Prisons  should  improve  men 
anyhow,  not  waste  them  .  .  ." 

The  weeks  went  by  and  the  months.  The  more  frequent 
appearance  of  his  ray  of  sunshine  told  Stephen  that  it  was 
Spring  in  the  world  outside.  Nature  was  awakening  from 
her  sleep;  the  armies  of  men  were  making  renewed  prepa- 
rations for  slaughter ;  and  for  all  his  stoicism  Stephen's  blood 
throbbed  impatiently  for  freedom.  The  last  weeks  before  his 
release  seemed  interminable. 

3 

The  Volunteers  were  a  nation  in  miniature.  They  had 
their  Parliament  and  Executive;  their  Exchequer  and  Pos- 
tal System;  Industries,  a  Labour  Exchange,  and  an  Insur- 
ance Society;  newspapers;  a  women's  organization;  boy 
scouts;  a  secret  service  even.  They  were  a  nation  at  war 
ever  on  the  alert :  a  unanimous  nation  with  a  single  purpose : 
a  disciplined  democracy:  a  nation  of  citizen  soldiers. 

Bernard  was  now  in  a  position  to  materialize  some  of  the 
dreams  of  his  childhood.  At  a  re-election  of  officers  he  dis- 
placed Brohoon  as  captain  of  his  company  and  set  to  work 
vigorously  to  drill,  organize  and  arm  his  men  on  more  effi- 
cient lines  than  that  officer  had  followed.  Their  numbers 
had  risen  again:  new  members  had  rejoined  and  old  ones 
were  slipping  back  to  their  allegiance.  The  average  attend- 
ance was  now  about  seventy.  Less  than  half  of  these  had 
rifles,  but  arms  were  being  steadily  and  surreptitiously 
brought  into  the  country,  and  nearly  every  week  Bernard 
was  able  to  produce  a  rifle  to  be  balloted  for  and  paid  for 
in  instalments.  .  .  .  What  sacrifices  this  payment  must  have 
involved  for  many!  Some  of  the  men  were  heroically  gen- 
erous: unskilled  labourers  with  ragged  coats  and  not  enough 
to  eat  he  knew  must  jealously  hoard  every  penny  to  pay 
the  weekly  instalment  for  the  rifle  which  was,  in  every 
sense,  their  dearest  possession ;  and  even  the  prosperous  ones, 
the  clerks  and  mechanics,  must  have  had  to  dock  them- 
selves of  many  luxuries.  .  .  .  Brohoon  was  a  man  of  slov- 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  401 

enly  habits  and  no  disciplinarian,  'and  Bernard  found  his 
hardest  task  in  smartening  up  the  men  and  teaching  them 
a  military  gait  and  carriage, —  the  more  so  as  he  had  neither 
himself  by  nature.  He  was  at  his  best  in  the  field,  where 
he  carried  out  hundreds  of  experiments  as  to  the  best  meth- 
ods of  using  and  economizing  his  forces.  (He  would  lie 
awake  at  night  thinking  out  problems:  how  to  block  such 
and  such  a  road  with  a  force  consisting  of  thirty-six  rifle- 
men, fifteen  men  with  shotguns,  and  twenty-two  men  with 
pikes  and  revolvers:  and  so  on.)  He  re-organized  the  com- 
pany from  top  to  bottom :  into  three  sections  he  put  his  rifle 
and  gun  men,  equally  divided  each  in  each;  and  into  the 
fourth  section  the  unarmed  men  (to  be  armed  in  sudden 
emergency  with  pikes  and  revolvers).  He  instituted  a 
mobilization  scheme  by  which  the  whole  company  could  be 
assembled  in  forty  minutes. 

The  drill-night  for  the  company  was  Thursday,  and  on 
Saturday  afternoons  they  used  to  attend  the  general  battalion 
drill.  Occasionally  on  Sundays  there  would  be  a  field-day 
for  the  whole  regiment:  to  Bernard  a  terrible  sacrifice,  since 
otherwise  the  day  would  be  spent  with  Mabel.  Mabel  too 
used  to  resent  his  absence  on  these  occasions. 

"  You  like  this  horrid  volunteering  better  than  me,"  she 
would  say. 

"  My  darling,  how  unfair  you  are.  If  you  only  knew 
how  I  long  to  be  with  you.  But  a  soldier  isn't  his  own 
master,  you  know." 

"  You  could  easily  get  off  if  you  liked." 

"  But  it  wouldn't  be  right,  dear,  especially  for  an  officer." 

"  It  isn't  right  to  desert  your  girl,  is  it  ?  " 

"  My  dear,  aren't  men  leaving  their  girls  for  their  coun- 
try's sake  all  over  the  world  today." 

"  That's  different." 

"  Don't  say  a  silly  thing  like  that,  dear.  It's  come  to  be 
the  most  annoying  phrase  in  the  English  language  for  me." 

"Why?  .  .  .  But  what  matter?  Bernard,  look  at  the 
sky.  It'll  be  lovely  at  Howth  tomorrow." 


402  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  It's  no  use,  dear." 

"  Oh,  well,  go  then." 

They  always  ended  thus,  and  the  sacrifice  was  rendered 
all  the  harder  for  Bernard. 

Came  the  field  day.  The  defending  side  would  march 
away  first:  to  the  Dublin  Mountains  or  to  Cuala.  The 
attackers  would  follow  in  due  course,  and  when  the  pre- 
arranged ground  was  reached  there  would  be  a  scrambling 
amateurish  battle.  You  would  see  straggling,  skirmishing- 
lines  blundering  across  the  hedge-intersected  fields  or  amongst 
the  boulders  and  quarry-holes  of  the  hillsides:  fierce  duels 
between  opposing  scouts:  whole  companies  wandering  about 
hopelessly  at  sea :  charges  in  column  on  the  road :  stout  old 
Hugo  McGurk  forcing  his  way  through  a  hedge:  a  volley 
of  hand-claps  (to  represent  firing) :  Umpleby  fussing  about 
with  a  map,  trying  to  find  the  way  out  of  a  morass  in  which 
he  had  impounded  his  company:  Hektor  O'Flaherty  storm- 
ing about  as  umpire:  then  a  final  rush  by  the  attackers  to 
end  the  battle,  and  fraternization  by  the  troops  of  both  sides 
over  sandwiches  and  ginger-beer  .  .  . 

Then  the  march  home,  tired  and  dirty,  in  the  evening. 
Oh,  the  brave  music  of  marching  feet!  Physical  exhilara- 
tion of  braced  shoulders  and  legs  rhythmically  swinging! 
Surge  of  primal  instincts  in  peace-tamed  hearts!  Two 
thousand  feet  moving  in  unison:  tramp-tramp  on  hard 
frozen  roads ;  plash-plash  on  muddy  ones.  O'Dwyer  spins 
by  on  a  bicycle.  "  Easy  time  those  fellows  on  the  staff  get," 
mutters  Bernard.  Tramp-tramp.  "  Suppose  we  were  really 
marching  on  Dublin."  Plash-plash.  "  Shall  we  ever,  I  won- 
der?" Tramp-tramp-tramp.  "Are  these  infernal  miles 
Irish  or  English?"  Some  one  behind  strikes  up  a  song: 

"  Deep  in  Canadian  woods  we've  met 
From  one  bright  Island  flown  .  .  ." 

Rings  out  the  chorus: 

"  Ireland,  boys,  hurrah ! 

Hurray! 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  403 

Ireland,  boys,  hurray! 

We'll  toast  old  Ireland,  dear  old  Ireland, 

Ireland,  boys,  hurray!" 

"  What  sadness  there  is  in  that  story  about  the  two  regi- 
ments on  the  Rapidan  .  .  .  slaughtering  each  other  next  day 
for  a  cause  that  mattered  to  none  of  them.  They  became 
soldiers  in  the  hope  of  some  day  righting  for  Ireland.  .  .  . 
Poor  devils,  they  slaughtered  each  other  instead.  .  .  .  Eter- 
nal waste !  "  .  .  .  Tramp-tramp.  ...  A  new  strain  swells 
forth : 

"  So-oldiers  are  we,  whose  lives  are  pledged  to  Ireland, 

Some  have  come*  from  a  land  beyond  the  wave. 
Sworn  to  be  free  .  .  ." 

A  motor  whizzes  by,  drowning  the  words  with  its  whirr: 
a  load  of  fur-wrapped  superciliousness:  "Disloyal  asses!" 
you  fancy  them  saying.  Tramp-tramp-tramp. 

"  Steady,  boys,  and  step  together. 
Steady,  boys,  and  step  together." 

"  Brave  boys:  a  column  of  sturdy  manhood.  Ridicule  and 
abuse  haven't  moved  them  from  their  purpose.  They've 
worked  and  toiled  for  the  cause  through  it  all.  Great  stuff! 
Gallant  souls."  ...  A  pair  of  laughing  lovers  passes  by  on 
the  side-walk.  "  How  much  pleasure  do  these  men  get  out 
of  life?  And  they  sacrifice  that  little  for  this."  Plash- 
plash.  "  All  over  Europe  armies  are  marching  like  this  "... 

"  Let  Erin  remember  the  days  of  old 

Ere  her  faithless  sons  betrayed  her 
When  Malachi  wore  the  collar  of  gold 
Which  he  won  from  her  proud  invader." 

"  Emmet  would  wish  to  have  seen  this  day.  Oh,  to  be  at 
the  head  of  an  army  marching  to  that  air,"  he  said.  "  And 
here  we  march  today.  .  .  ."  Tramp-tramp  .  .  .  Lights 
ahead:  the  outskirts  of  the  city:  traffic  and  chattering  peo- 
ple. The  Soldier's  Song  swells  forth  again  and  dies  away: 


404  THE  WASTED  ISL'AND 

"  Tonight  we'll  man  the  Bearna-Baoghail 
In  Erin's  cause  come  woe  or  weal. 
'Mid  cannon's  roar  and  rifle's  peal 
We'll  chant  a  soldier's  song." 

Clatter  of  boot-soles  on  cobbles.     On  through  the  city  .  .  . 

"  March  to  attention !  " 

The  column  marches  in  silence  with  sloped  arms  amid 
crowds  that  either  heed  not  or  stare  and  scoff.  .  .  . 

The  Volunteers  had  their  own  social  life  too.  The  differ- 
ent companies  and  battalions  used  to  give  concerts  and 
ceilidhes ;  the  Boy  Scouts  gave  theirs ;  the  Gaelic  League  gave 
more.  Bernard  became  a  habitue  of  the  ceilidhes.  He  loved 
the  rollicking  swing  of  the  old  Irish  dances;  the  melancholy 
of  the  songs;  and  the  irresistible  gaiety  of  the  dance-music. 
He  induced  Mabel  to  come  with  him  once,  but  never  again. 
She  thought  the  company  "  low  "  (it  certainly  was  not  gen- 
teel) and  the  dances  were  too  rough  and  strenuous  for  her. 
The  master  of  ceremonies  was  too  odiously  familiar  with 
her,  she  thought.  He  was  a  shock-headed  youth,  toothless 
from  canine  to  canine,  wearing  an  untidy  saffron  kilt  which 
revealed  a  pair  of  very  dirty  knees;  and  in  his  good-natured 
eagerness  to  instruct  Mabel  in  the  intricacies  of  the  dance 
he  handled  her  (with  those  grubby  paws  of  his)  far  more 
than  she  liked  —  far  more  than  Bernard  liked  too,  for  that 
matter.  ...  So  Mabel  went  to  no  more  ceilidhes,  and  Ber- 
nard in  consequence  was  prevented  from  attending  as  many 
as  he  would  have  wished. 

They  were  gay  functions,  those  ceilidhes:  skirling  pipes 
and  laughing  fiddle  and  merry  dances:  wailing  songs  and 
fierce  recitations;  babble  of  Irish  everywhere.  Some  one 
would  come  up  to  Bernard  and  say: 

"  Cionnus  taoi,  a  Bhearnard?" 

"  Taim  go  maith,  go  raibh  maith  agat.  Cionnus  taoi 
fein?" 

"  Go  maith.     Cionnus  ar  thaithn  an  Aonach  leat?  " 

"  Middling.     Is  better  Sraid  Graf  ton  e." 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  405 

"  Mhaise,  greadadh  chug  at,  is  mor-chuiseach  ataoi  le  do 
chuid  Gaedhealach  briste!  " 

"  Cad  is  brigh  le  sin?  Ni'l  acht  cupla  foda  Gaedhealacha 
agam." 

"  A  Td  go  leoir.     Beidh  tu  Gaedheal  mor  go  socair." 

And  the  conversation  would  continue  in  English. 

Every  one  came  to  those  ceilidhes.  Staid  professors  and 
scholars  with  European  reputations  looked  on  from  the  back- 
ground: grave  dames  in  Irish  costume;  little  shop-girls  in 
white  muslin ;  a  stray  man  in  evening  dress ;  Gaelic  Leaguers 
in  saffron  kilts;  Indian  law-students  in  their  brilliant  native 
costume;  Volunteers  in  their  grey-green  uniforms:  a  motley 
pattern  they  made  as  they  threaded  their  ways  in  and  out 
of  the  mazes  of  the  Rinnce  Fada  or  Ballai  Luimnig.  Here 
you  would  see  McGurk  dancing  bravely  in  spite  of  his  girth ; 
there  Umpleby  hovering  near  a  celebrity:  here  Brohoon  strut- 
ting around  like  a  peacock;  there  Austin  Mallow  gazing 
rapt  into  space  .  .  . 

One  night  Stephen  and  another  man  just  released  from 
gaol  were  brought  in  by  a  crowd  of  admirers, —  Stephen 
obviously  against  his  will.  The  dancers  —  it  was  during  an 
interval  —  rose  and  cheered.  The  other  man  smirked  and 
bowed,  but  Stephen  scowled  angrily.  He  came  over  after- 
wards and  sat  by  Bernard. 

"  You're  out  early,"  said  Bernard. 

"  You  get  a  remission  for  good  behaviour." 

"  Is  gaol  a  very  frightful  experience  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  Isn't  it  rather  boring,  then  ?  " 

"  No.     I  learned  a  lot." 

"Well,  I  suppose  that's  something  gained.  .  .  .  Person- 
ally I'd  rather  dispense  with  it." 

Stephen  looked  round  superciliously  on  the  scene  of  gaiety. 

"  Such  a  way  of  spending  an  evening,"  he  said. 

"A  damn  good  way,"  replied  Bernard.  "You're  a  ter- 
rible anchorite,  Stephen.  You've  nothing  human  in  you." 


406  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  To  see  our  Volunteers  capering  about  like  that !     Ugh !  " 
"  They're  none  the  worse  soldiers  for  it.  ...  Red  blood 
would  be  a  political  asset  to  you,  Stephen.     You'll  never 
achieve  anything  if  you  can't  allow  for  human  nature." 
"  Seven  centuries'  oppression  should  have  hardened  us." 
"  Thank  God  it  hasn't,"  answered  Bernard  .  .  . 
Bernard  had  transplanted  himself  bodily  from  one  stratum 
of  society  into  another.     He  saw  no  more  of  the  Gunby 
Rourkes  and  Heuston  Harringtons  and  Bonegrafts  and  other 
denizens  of  the  Square,   and   became   acquainted  with  life 
on  a  totally  different  scale  and  governed  by  totally  different 
conditions.     In   the   Volunteers   there  were   men   of   many 
grades,  social  and  financial,  but  there  was  no  sharp  dividing 
line  of  snobbery  between  them :  caste  was  unknown  to  them : 
their  spirit  was  democratic,  inborn  and  unconscious. 

First  there  were  the  civil  servants  and  clerks:  prosperous 
most  of  them  unless  they  married.  A  single  young  man 
can  live  very  comfortably  in  lodgings,  dress  well,  possess 
books,  and  have  a  fair  amount  of  enjoyment  on  his  pay  of 
anything  from  twenty-five  to  sixty  shillings  a  week ;  but  mar- 
riage means  children  and  a  house.  One  of  Bernard's  lieu- 
tenants on  whom  he  occasionally  called  was  a  man  of  thirty- 
five,  married,  with  six  children.  He  lived  on  the  north  side 
of  the  city  in  one  of  a  row  of  exactly  similar  two-storied 
red-brick  villas.  There  was  a  railing  in  front  with  a  gate, 
on  which  was  the  name  Emain  Macha  (the  houses  beside  it 
were  called  The  Beeches  and  Roseville},  Inside  the  railing 
was  a  grass-plot  four  feet  square,  with  a  miserable  enonymus 
shrub  in  the  centre  and  some  wilted  London  Pride  in  a 
parched  flower-bed.  A  diminutive  asphalted  pathway  led 
to  the  hall  door,  reached  by  ascending  one  step  of  granite. 
The  tiny  hall  was  so  packed  with  unnecessary  furniture  that 
the  door  could  only  be  opened  half-way  by  the  lady  of  the 
house,  who  would  come  down  with  sleeves  rolled  up  and 
smelling  of  Sunlight  soap,  apologizing  that  this  was  her  wash- 
ing-day. Poor,  bothered,  worn-out  young  woman !  She  was 
crushed  with  the  burden  of  making  ends  meet,  keeping  her 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  407 

house  clean,  keeping  her  husband  comfortable,  and  bearing 
and  rearing  children.  She  had  long  ceased  to  worry  about 
her  appearance,  but  she  had  evidently  been  pretty  once. 
(Bernard  wondered  did  her  husband  still  love  her:  was 
there  time  for  romance  in  theij  scrambled  lives?)  She 
would  show  him  into  the  sitting-room,  a  musty  apartment 
but  little  larger  than  the  hall  and  most  uncomfortably  con- 
gested with  gimcrack  furniture.  There  he  would  sit  talking 
over  a  meagre  fire  and  a  pipe  with  his  lieutenant,  a  big  man 
with  a  hearty  laugh  who  seemed  not  at  all  stifled  by  his 
cramping  surroundings.  Upstairs  they  would  hear  the 
squealing  of  the  children  while  their  mother,  unceasing  in 
toil,  put  them  to  bed.  A  piano  would  jangle  in  the  house 
next  door  and  a  gramophone  screech  in  the  one  opposite. 

"  Room !  room !  "  Bernard  would  say  to  himself.  "  This 
eternal  huddling !  Street  upon  street  of  these  infernal  villas : 
soul  strangling  cages :  man's  sacrifice  of  comfort  to  gentility. 
.  .  .  Oh,  damn,  damn,  damn  the  whole  system." 

The  frank,  unpretentious  bareness  and  carpetlessness  of 
the  houses  of  the  lower  grade  —  the  labourers  and  artisans  — 
offended  him  less.  They  were  less  stuffy,  and  so  were  their 
inhabitants.  They  made  no  pretence  to  gentility  at  all; 
roared  with  laughter  when  amused;  spat  on  the  floor;  and 
did  not  use  pocket-handkerchiefs.  Their  uproarious  evenings 
were  a  pleasure  he  did  not  indulge  in  often. 

These  two  grades  had  a  good  deal  of  discomfort  and  not 
a  little  hardship  in  their  lives,  but  there  were  Volunteers 
of  a  lower  grade  still:  the  class  that  exists  on  the  hunger 
line:  the  class  to  which  the  war  meant  not  dearer  food  but 
less  food:  not  the  substitution  of  margarine  for  butter,  but 
the  abandonment  of  margarine  and  the  diminishing  of  bread. 
Life  for  them  was  a  perpetual  struggle  and  a  losing  one; 
they  had  little  room  for  ideas,  but  their  inspiration  was  a 
dumb  instinctive  patriotism.  Their  one  sorrow  was  their 
inability  to  arm  themselves.  They  would  have  starved  them- 
selves to  do  it,  but  they  were  already  starving.  Sometimes 
they  tried  desperate  methods :  a  gaunt,  hungry,  ragged  mem- 


4o8  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

her  of  Bernard's  company  turned  up  on  parade  one  day  with 
a  modern  Lee-Enfield  rifle  for  which  he  had  way-laid  one 
of  his  Britannic  Majesty's  soldiers  in  a  lonesome  place.  He 
established  a  valuable  precedent. 

One  of  Bernard's  section-commanders  was  of  this  class, 
another  was  a  grocer's  assistant  and  the  remaining  two  were 
clerks.  One  of  his  lieutenants  was  a  mechanic,  the  other 
a  civil  servant.  They  met  at  his  flat  occasionally  to  discuss 
the  business  and  progress  of  the  company,  and  the  lieutenants 
sometimes  came  in  for  a  friendly  talk.  Swathythe  used  to 
sniff  aristocratically  at  these  visitors,  waiting  on  whom  he 
deemed  beneath  him.  He  approached  Bernard  once  on  the 
subject. 

"  If  you'll  allow  me  to  say  so,  sir,"  he  said,  after  some 
tactful  humming  and  hawing,  "  I  think  it's  a  pity  for  a 
young  gentleman  like  you  to  associate  with  such  riff-raff. 
They'll  just  use  you  for  their  own  ends,  if  you  don't  mind 
me  saying  so.  Some  of  these  fellows  as  come  'ere  never 
brush  their  'air,  sir.  They  spit  on  the  carpet,  sir:  I've 
awful,  work  after  'em ;  they  don't  know  'ow  to  be'ave  in  a 
gentleman's  'ouse,  sir.  You  ought  to  stick  to  your  own 
class,  Mr.  Lascelles,  wot  knows  your  ways  and  you  know 
theirs,  for  mark  my  word,  sir,  these  people  will  just  use  you 
and  chuck  you  aside  when  they  done  with  you.  ....  I  'ope 
you'll  excuse  me  speaking  so  freely,  sir." 

"  You  haven't  spoken  a  bit  freely,  Swathythe,"  replied 
Bernard.  "  You've  spoken  like  the  slave  you  are."  .  .  . 

It  was  about  this  time  that  there  came  to  live  in  the  flat 
above  Bernard's  a  man  called  Malone:  a  stern-looking,  griz- 
zled Irish -American  on  the  verge  of  fifty  years  of  age.  He 
came  early  to  see  Bernard  and  almost  at  once  demanded 
point-blank : 

"  Does  this  Volunteer  movement  mean  business?  " 

Bernard  assured  him  that  it  did,  but  Malone  did  not  ap- 
pear satisfied. 

"  Are  you  going  to  fight?  "  he  asked. 

"  Under  certain  conditions,"  replied  Bernard. 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  409 

"  See  here,"  said  Malone.  "  I'd  better  tell  you  right  away 
what  sort  of  a  man  I  am.  I  was  born  in  Tipperary  of  quiet 
decent  folk  who  paid  their  rent  regularly  and  took  no  part 
in  politics.  When  I  was  about  six  years  old  our  landlord 
discovered  that  cattle  paid  better  than  human  beings,  so 
we  were  flung  out  on  the  roadside  and  our  home  pulled 
down.  We  had  to  emigrate,  of  course,  but  my  father  wasn't 
the  sort  of  man  to  take  tyranny  lying  down,  and  a  few  days 
before  we  started  he  shot  the  landlord  dead:  and,  to  be  as 
brief  as  possible,  he  was  caught  and  hanged  for  it.  My 
poor  mother  and  I  made  for  America  where  she  had  a  brother 
who  had  promised  to  help  us,  and  in  the  coffin-ship  we 
crossed  in  my  mother  died.  .  .  .  Well,  my  uncle  was  a 
single  man  and  doing  well,  and  he  stood  by  me.  I  won't 
bore  you  with  details  of  my  life  more  than  to  say  that  I  made 
good  and  became  pretty  well  off.  But  I  was  never  con- 
tented. Way  down  I  always  felt  that  I  wanted  to  be  even 
with  the  people  who  killed  my  mother  and  father,  and  I'd 
a  kind  of  objection  to  being  driven  out  of  my  country.  My 
uncle,  however,  was  always  telling  me  to  stay  where  I  was 
and  not  bother  about  the  old  country.  He  said  it  wasn't 
worth  living  in  so  long  as  it  was  ruled  by  the  English,  and 
the  English  could  only  be  driven  out  by  war,  and  the  coun- 
try wasn't  strong  enough  to  fight:  every  time  she  fought  she 
was  beaten.  I  read  some  Irish  history  then,  and  came  to 
the  conclusion  he  was  right.  But  about  that  time  the  Par- 
nell  movement  began  to  look  like  winning  out,  and,  thinking 
that  perhaps  there  might  be  something  in  Constitutionalism 
after  all,  I  came  over  her  and  lent  a  hand.  But  you  know 
what  happened:  nothing  but  failure:  and  I  went  back  to 
America  disgusted.  .  .  .  Well,  after  that  I  stuck  to  my 
business  for  a  while.  Then,  when  the  trouble  between 
England  and  the  Boers  began  I  came  over  here  again  to  see 
if  the  people  were  game  for  a  rising.  But  not  they.  The 
country  was  just  about  dead,  and  there  were  no  arms  in  it 
anyway.  However,  I  got  a  chance  to  get  my  own  back  on 
England,  for  I  struck  up  with  some  fellows  who  were  getting 


4io  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

up  a  brigade  to  fight  for  the  Boers  and  I  joined  them." 

"Was  there  a  man  called  Christopher  Reilly  among 
them?" 

"  Yes.  Damn  good  stuff  he  was,  too.  He  was  killed  in 
action  afterwards.  Did  you  know  him  ?  " 

"  He  was  my  uncle." 

"  Then  you're  sure  to  be  the  right  stuff.  As  soon  as  I 
heard  the  Volunteers  had  declared  against  England  I  came 
right  over  to  join  in  the  fight.  When  is  it  to  be?  " 

Bernard  tried  to  explain  the  policy  of  the  Volunteers,  and 
Malone  was  obviously  disappointed  with  it. 

"What's  the  good  of  shilly-shally?"  he  said.  "If  we 
don't  fight  now  we'll  never  get  such  a  chance  again.  Eu- 
ropean wars  are  rare  birds,  my  lad." 

They  argued  long  and  hotly,  but  Malone  was  impervious 
to  reason.  He  was  no  politician;  just  a  plain  honest  man  of 
one  idea:  and  while  Bernard  was  exasperated  by  his  stolid- 
ity he  could  not  but  admire  him.  He  was  very  much  against 
accepting  any  German  help.  Once  let  them  in,  he  said, 
and  there  would  be  no  getting  them  out  again :  all  great 
Powers  were  the  same. 

His  creed  was  very  simple. 

"  Our  own  right  arm  and  the  help  of  God,"  he  said,  "  will 
see  us  through.  Fight  whenever  you  can.  What  matter 
if  you  lose?  If  you  fight  often  enough  you're  bound  to  win 
in  the  end." 

4 

The  fairest  part  of  the  Irish  year  is  that  season  when 
Spring  is  melting  into  Summer,  when  the  lilac  laburnum 
and  hawthorn  bloom  triumphant  over  the  fallen  cherry 
blossom;  when  the  foliage  of  beech  and  lime  and  elm  and 
sycamore  is  fresh  and  viridescent;  when  the  sunlight  is  still 
silvery  and  the  breezes  still  cooling:  the  ideal  season  for 
lovers.  Bernard  and  Mabel  took  full  advantage  of  it. 
They  spent  most  of  their  Sundays  amid  the  bee-loud  heather 
of  Howth  or  scrambling  amongst  the  rocks  of  the  Scalp  or 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  411 

sailing  about  the  shimmering  Bay,  and  in  the  evenings  they 
watched  the  decrescent  moon  of  May  waning  in  the  eastern 
sky  and  at  her  going  looked  for  the  rising  sickle  of  June  in 
the  West.  In  the  nights  of  her  absence  they  gazed  upon  the 
stars,  making  new  groupings  and  constellations  of  their  own : 
Mabella  and  Bernardus  and  Johannes  Taurus  Collapsus, — 
a  romantic  occupation. 

They  began  to  know  each  other,  and  to  question.  Ber- 
nard was  something  of  a  puzzle  to  Mabel.  His  seriousness; 
the  long  political  lectures  he  used  to  give  her;  his  sudden 
bursts  of  anger  over  some  act  of  English  brutality  or  hypoc- 
risy ;  his  fierce  enthusiasms  for  beautiful  things, —  the  plash- 
ing of  a  brook,  the  smell  of  damp  woods,  a  stanza  of  poetry, 
what  not  —  all  his  impersonal  emotions :  these  things  amazed 
and  disconcerted  her.  She  could  not  understand  why,  if 
he  loved  her,  he  would  never  desert  a  Volunteer  duty  for 
the  sake  of  her  company.  She  resented  his  tendency  to 
sermonize.  .  .  .  And  then  there  were  the  things  she  loved 
in  him;  the  laughter  and  sadness  in  his  eyes;  the  play  of 
the  wind  and  sunbeams  in  his  hair;  the  gesture  of  his  hand 
and  thrust  of  his  chin  in  argument;  the  way  he  held  his 
pipe  in  his  strong  white  teeth ;  his  smile, —  mostly  in  the 
eyes,  with  just  a  twitch  of  the  lip;  the  queer  impetuous 
things  he  said ;  and  then  the  tenderness  of  his  embrace. 

And  Bernard  puzzled  over  Mabel  too:  her  flippancy,  her 
easy  acceptances,  her  desire  for  mere  happiness,  her  lack  of 
interest  in  ideas,  her  blindness  and  deafness  to  the  things 
he  thought  beautiful,  her  insistence  on  the  personal  equa- 
tion in  all  things.  He  could  not  understand  her  unreadi- 
ness to  sacrifice  his  company  occasionally  to  the  cause  in 
which  they  both  believed.  He  resented  her  tendency  to 
turn  everything  into  a  joke.  He  would  begin  to  ask  him- 
self if  he  really  loved  her  and  then  a  glance  at  her  face 
would  make  him  forget  everything  else.  He  loved  her  airy 
grace  and  the  yielding  slimness  of  her  waist  and  the  wonder 
of  her  eyes  and  the  scent  of  her  hair.  He  loved  the  queer 
little  things  she  said,  and  the  soft  touch  of  her  hands,  the. 


412  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

warm  tenderness  of  her  lips,  and  her  trustful  surrender  of 
herself  to  his  embrace. 

They  loved  and  talked  of  love  and  made  love  to  each 
other  and  built  castles  in  the  air  and  were  happy  .  .  . 

They  passed  an  organ  grinder  in  the  street  one  day. 

"  What  waste  of  human  material,"  quoth  Bernard. 
"  What  use  is  a  system  that  leaves  hundreds  of  men,  many  of 
promising  material,  trying  to  grind  out  a  living  in  that  use- 
less way?  " 

"  Most  people  are  poor  through  their  own  fault,"  pro- 
claims Mabel. 

Bernard  has  run  up  against  that  argument  with  infuriat- 
ing frequency,  so  he  starts  on  a  new  tack  (Shavian  of 
course). 

"  But  take  a  baby  just  born  into  the  world.  Why  should 
he  be  handicapped  in  the  battle  of  life  right  at  the  start? 
How  can  he  ever  win  his  way  if  his  parents  are  too 
poor  to  feed  or  educate  him  properly?  He  never  gets  a 
chance." 

"  His  parents  shouldn't  marry  if  they  can't  afford  chil- 
dren," says  Mabel  primly  (innocent  little  Malthusian:  Mal- 
thusianism  of  this  sort  is  rampant  among  good  and  charitable 
folk).  Against  this  rampart  Bernard's  arguments  storm  in 
vain. 

"  Bernard,  I'm  afraid  you're  getting  indelicate,"  she  says 
when  he  goes  too  far. 

Reluctantly  after  a  time  Bernard  realized  the  impossibility 
of  carrying  Mabel  with  him  in  his  social  ideas.  She  was  one 
of  those  people  who  consider  Christ's  statement  of  fact  about 
the  poor  being  always  with  us  as  a  complete  argument  against 
all  Social  reformers.  The  first  time  she  used  this  argument 
against  him  he  felt  a  desperate  clutch  of  disappointment  at 
his  heart,  and  a  fleeting  memory  of  Janet  Morecambe 
crossed  his  mind ;  but  the  next  moment  Mabel  had  said : 

"  Don't  let's  quarrel  over  horrid  things,  dear,"  and  put 
an  arm  round  him  and  kissed  him.  She  was  irresistible 
then  . 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  413 

One  brilliant  day  they  took  a  well-stocked  picnic-basket 
and  went  by  motor-boat  to  Ireland's  Eye.  Through  bracken 
shoulder-high  they  trudged  to  the  topmost  point  of  the 
island.  Half-way  up  they  had  to  stop  and  kiss  each  other, 
and  then  just  as  he  had  released  her  he  had  to  pull  her  back 
to  him  and  kiss  her  again. 

"  Greedy  boy!  "  she  cried,  and  ran  from  him  laughing. 

Breathless  they  reached  the  top  and  stood  upon  the  rocky 
pinnacle.  Other  picnic  parties  were  landing  on  the  beach: 
there  were  parties  scattered  all  over  the  island,  the  smoke 
from  whose  fires  curled  up  in  thin  wisps  here  and  there, 
faintly  perfuming  the  air. 

"  Look,  dear,"  says  Bernard,  hand  sweeping  the  horizon, 
"  we  came  skimming  round  the  Bailey  there,  just  where 
that  purple  patch  is,  then  we  let  her  run  before  the  wind 
right  into  the  harbour.  .  .  .  Got  in  exactly  to  time  just  as 
we'd  arranged  a  month  before.  Not  bad,  eh?  " 

"  You're  some  boy,  aren't  you  ?  " 

"  You'd  say  that  if  you  knew  all  the  secrets  of  that  stunt." 

"  What  secrets?  " 

"  Tu  ue  quaesieris;  scire  nefas" 

11  What's  all  that  about?  " 

"  Curiosity,  thy  name  is  girl." 

"  I  suppose  you  like  to  be  thought  an  enigma.  Well,  keep 
your  old  secrets.  /  don't  care." 

"  Oh,  what  a  gorgeous  day !  On  such  a  day  Deirdre 
methinks " 

"  Here,  open  that  basket  and  make  yourself  useful.  I'm 
hungry." 

They  chose  a  mossy  hollow  for  their  meal.  All  round 
them  insects  buzzed  and  hummed :  sea  gulls  wheeled  scream- 
ing overhead:  puffins  scuttled  through  the  air  and  darting 
down  into  the  sea  climbed  cliffwards  with  silvery  fish  in 
their  pink  parrotlike  beaks.  The  sun  drew  fragrant  odours 
from  the  baking  turf  and  the  dead  and  living  bracken  and 
heather.  Bernard  and  Mabel  munched  chicken  and  choco- 
late, 


4H  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Why  can't  we  always  be  together,  mo  chroidhe?  .  .  . 
When  shall  we  be  married  ?  " 

"  I  wonder." 

"  Why  not  now  ?  " 

"  How  could  we,  dear?  " 

"  Why  not?     I  have  money." 

"  Not  enough  to  marry  on,  I'm  afraid." 

"  We  could  marry  on  a  ten  pound  note." 

"  Yes.     And  be  miserable  and  uncomfortable  ever  after." 

"  You  talk  as  if  I  was  a  pauper,"  protested  Bernard. 

"  One  must  be  sensible,  dear." 

"  Many  people  have  married  on  less  than  I've  got." 

"  And  you  may  be  sure  they've  regretted  it." 

"  What  a  little  bundle  of  common-sense  it  is !  " 

"  I'd  need  to  be,  with  a  big  lump  of  romance  like  you." 

"  But,  dear,  wouldn't  you  like  to  be  married  soon  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  so,  but  I  don't  want  to  be  scraping  and 
saving.  I've  had  enough  of  it.  ...  How  goes  the  practice, 
dear?" 

"  Not  so  badly.  Nine  patients  on  the  roll.  A  new  one 
yesterday." 

"  What  was  wrong  with  him  ?  " 

"Hay  fever." 

"  Why  don't  your  friends  get  real  bad  things  that  you 
could  charge  heavily  for?  We'll  never  get  married  on  dys- 
pepsia and  hay-fever." 

"  Oh,  every  little  helps." 

"  We've  been  engaged  six  months, —  half  a  year." 

"Tired  of  it  yet?" 

"  Dear!     How  could  you?  " 

"My  darling!" 

Silence  for  a  while. 

"  Dear,  will  you  promise  not  to  be  angry  if  I  tell  you 
something?  " 

"What  is  it?" 

"  But  you  must  promise  not  to  be  angry  first." 

"  Well,  I  won't  be  unless  you  deserve  it," 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  415 

"  I've  been  appointed  an  organizer  in  the  country." 

"  Is  that  all?     Why  should  that  make  me  angry?  " 

"  Well,  you  see,  it  means  no  more  Saturdays  together." 

"  Oh,  Bernard !     How  could  you  ?  " 

"  Dear,  I  couldn't  help  it.  Some  of  our  country  corps 
are  falling  to  pieces  for  lack  of  instructors  and  I  have  to  do 
my  share  to  buck  things  up." 

"  But  think  of  me,  dear." 

"  Indeed  I  do.  If  it  wasn't  for  you  I'd  give  my  Sundays 
too." 

"  Oh,  give  them  all  if  you  like.     Don't  mind  me." 

"  Darling,  I  wish  you'd  be  reasonable  .  .  ." 

"  I  wish  you'd  be  kinder." 

Deadlock.     Presently  Mabel  whimpers: 

"  And  only  just  now  you  were  wondering  when  we  could 
be  married.  How  can  we  ever  be  married  if  you  neglect 
your  practice,  running  all  over  the  country?  " 

"  You  make  things  very  hard  for  me,  dear." 

The  joy  of  the  day  is  clouded,  but  in  the  end  there  is 
reconciliation  with  kisses  .  .  . 

Another  day. 

A  recruiting  march  through  the  streets  of  the  city.  A 
pipers'  band  in  kilts,  with  green  streamers  from  their  pipes: 
a  mighty  flag  of  rebel  green:  the  band  is  skirling  out  The 
Wearing  of  the  Green.  To  gain  recruits  for  the  British 
Army  everything  is  done  to  appeal  to  the  national  spirit 
which  the  very  presence  of  that  army  oppresses  and  derides. 
The  colours  of  England  are  never  to  be  seen  upon  the  re- 
cruiting platforms  nowadays:  the  very  recruiting-posters 
and  hand-bills  smack  of  Ninety-Eight:  vile  hypocrisy  of  Eng- 
land. What  would  Tone  say  to  see  his  name  used  and  his 
words  misrepresented  in  order  to  delude  his  countrymen 
into  the  army  of  the  oppressor?  But  to  hear  that  air: 
"  They're  hanging  men  and  women  for  the  wearing  of  the 
green  " 

"  Good  lordl"  exclaimed  Bernard.  "  They've  no  sense, 
of  decency." 


4i6  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  And  look  at  that,"  he  said,  pointing  to  a  recruiting 
poster  which  represented  a  body  of  troops  marching  past  the 
old  Houses  of  Parliament  over  which  flew  the  green  flag 
with  the  crownless  harp.  "The  abandoned  beasts!  If  our 
people  don't  hate  the  swine  after  that  they  never  will.  The 
damned,  damned  hypocrites !  " 

"  How  seriously  you  do  take  things ! "  said  Mabel. 
"  Don't  worry  your  poor  old  head  over  nothing." 

"Nothing!"  exclaimed  Bernard.  He  was  thinking  of 
the  brave  boys  marching  away  to  their  death  in  response 
to  appeals  written  by  cynical  old  politicians  with  their  tongues 
in  their  cheeks:  marching  to  fulfil  their  side  of  a  treaty 
whose  breach  by  the  other  side  was  a  foregone  conclusion. 
"  Oh,  world  of  knaves  and  fools!  "  he  thought.  "  How 
long  shall  the  tragic  farce  go  on  ?  .  .  .  And  if  I  were  to  tell 
the  fools  what  I  thought  of  the  knaves,  the  fools  would 
laugh  me  to  scorn  and  the  knaves  would  jail  or  kill  me." 

"  Where  shall  we  go  for  tea  today?  "  asks  Mabel. 

"Eh?  —  Oh,  tea?  ...  I  don't  know.  Wherever  you 
like." 

"  Let's  try  the  Princess  for  a  change,  then." 


5 

Crowley  was  out  attending  to  a  case  when  Bernard  arrived 
at  his  house  at  Ballylangan,  but  he  had  left  orders  as  to  his 
reception  and  the  house-keeper  installed  him  comfortably 
in  the  sitting-room  with  tea  and  papers.  A  large  volume 
lay  open  on  a  table,  and  Bernard  picked  it  up:  it  was  Max 
Nordau's  Degeneration.  He  began  to  read  at  the  opened 
pages,  which  contained  the  slashing  attack  on  Rosetti  and 
the  mystics. 

"  This  man  has  sound  dope,"  thought  Bernard.  "  He 
says  everything  I've  been  thinking  about  friend  Mallow  and 
his  gang.  .  .  .  Footling  round  with  the  number  Seven  and 
the  rest  of  it.  By  Jove,  he  has  all  the  stigmata." 

Nordau  becoming  heavy  after  a  time,  he  went  searching 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  417 

among  the  pile  of  periodicals.  The  mauve  cover  of  Manan- 
nan  caught  his  eye  at  once. 

"  Hello!  Wonder  what  old  Crowley  indulges  in  this  for? 
Thinks  it  a  sort  of  duty,  I  suppose.  I  wouldn't  waste  six- 
pence on  it." 

He  turned  the  leaves  idly.  There  was  a  pompous  little 
article  on  The  Art  of  Austin  Mallow  by  Cyril  Umpleby, — 
mostly  syrup ;  a  very  inaccurate  account  of  the  Howth  gun- 
running  —  it  might  almost  be  called  an  Umplebiad  —  by 
Austin  Mallow  ("  Quid  pro  quo,"  muttered  Bernard)  ; 
an  article  called  "  Jail  Days  "  by  Brian  Mallow ;  and  two 
poems:  one  a  thrush-and-rosebud  song  by  Theodosia,  the 
other  an  obscure  lucubration  called  The  Lord  hath  Arisen, 
by  Austin. 

"  Seven  flames  aflare  in  the  blood-red  sky 
The  pallid  earth  shudders,  then  leaps  on  high," 

read  Bernard. 

"  Old  Nordau,  I  wish  you  weren't  quite  so  voluminous, 
or  I'd  publish  you  as  a  penny  pamphlet.  You're  a  tonic, 
Herr  Professor,"  he  said. 

Crowley 's  voice  sounded  in  the  hall,  and  the  door  opened. 

"  Hello,  old  man,  so  glad  to  see  you.  What's  that  tosh 
you're  reading?  Lord  I'm  tired.  Let  me  get  these  boots 
off.  .  .  .  Just  been  introducing  a  new  subject  into  the  sun- 
kissed  Empire:  future  citizen  of  the  Republic,  let's  hope: 
he  didn't  seem  a  bit  keen  on  entering  the  Empire  anyhow. 
.  .  .  Stands  the  Castle  where  it  did  ?  " 

"  More  or  less,  though  Gussie  seems  to  regard  us  more 
in  sorrow  than  in  anger.  .  .  .  The  Party's  still  gratefully 
kissing  John  Bull's  boots." 

"  Well  —  so  long  as  it's  only  his  boots  .  .  ." 

"  It's  not  doing  them  any  good  with  the  people  though. 
The  cranks  and  soreheads  are  markedly  on  the  increase  in 
town." 

"  Is  that  so?     I  wish  I  could  say  the  same  for  this  place." 

"  How  are  things  here?  " 


418  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Pretty  rotten,  I'm  afraid.  There's  about  a  dozen  sound 
men  in  Ballylangan  and  a  couple  of  score  in  the  surrounding 
district.  There's  one  good  sign  though.  The  National 
Volunteers  are  falling  to  pieces,  and  only  meet  once  in  a 
way  for  a  resolution-passing  stunt." 

"  It's  the  same  everywhere.  In  some  places  companies 
are  coming  over  to  us  holus  bolus." 

"  So  I  believe.  Rosaleen's  beginning  to  see  through  her 
seducer." 

"  About  time.     Can  we  begin  work  soon  ?  " 

"  Yes.  I've  ordered  a  parade  in  a  central  spot  for  eight 
tonight.  We'll  buzz  over  after  dinner." 

"  The  war  goes  well,  doesn't  it." 

"  Yes.  The  Russians  have  gone  back  so  far  that  they'll 
have  to  publish  new  war-maps.  .  .  .  By  the  way,  did  you 
see  Redmond's  speech  about  the  maps  of  Ireland?  " 

"  I  never  bother  wading  through  that  sort  of  muck." 

"  This  was  a  treat.  He  says  that  every  German  soldier 
going  into  battle  has  a  map  of  Ireland  in  his  pocket  with 
the  farm  he's  going  to  get  marked  on  it.  Now  a  map  that 
size  would  make  some  bundle.  It  would  take  a  man  twenty- 
five  feet  high  to  carry  it,  I  reckon,  so  you  needn't  wonder 
now  how  the  Germans  are  able  to  beat  the  world.  They're 
a  nation  of  Supermen." 

"  But  aren't  we  a  green  people  ?  I  suppose  the  audience 
swallowed  it  all  right?  " 

"  To  the  last  foot  of  it." 

Dinner  was  served  presently  and  Crowley  made  inquiries 
about  his  friends  in  town.  He  seemed  to  chafe  against  his 
secluded  life  as  a  dispensary  doctor. 

"  And  how's  our  old  friend  Fergus  Moore?  " 

"  Still  on  the  same  old  tack.  ...  I  remember  years  ago 
when  I  first  met  him  (I  was  a  seoinin  then)  he  told  me 
physical  force  was  no  good  and  constitutionalism  was  worse. 
I  remember  him  one  day  comparing  parliamentary  agitation 
to  a  dwarf,  beaten  in  a  fight  with  a  giant,  throwing  down 
his  sword  and  saying  '  Here,  let's  reason  this  out.'  I  re- 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  419 

member  at  the  time  suggesting  a  combination  of  the  two 
methods,  and  when  I  met  him  the  other  day  I  reminded  him 
of  this,  and  told  him  the  Volunteer  movement  tried  to 
achieve  that.  '  Well,'  says  he,  '  and  what  have  you  suc- 
ceeded in  doing?  Split  the  country  once  more:  that's  all. 
Ireland,'  says  he,  '  is  a  hopeless  case.'  I  left  him  at  that. 
These  pessimists  would  make  Mark  Tapley  gloomy.  .  .  . 
I  believe  he  drinks  now  on  top  of  his  other  little  weak- 
ness." 

"  Let  him  go  hang.     But  he's  a  loss.     He  has  brains." 

"  There's  a  hell  of  a  lot  of  people  with  brains  and  no  guts 
in  this  country.  You  know  the  academic  intellectual  type, 
for  instance,  that  takes  up  a  detached  point  of  view  and 
has  the  impudence  to  lecture  the  rest  of  us?" 

"  Kennedy,  for  instance." 

"  Exactly.  ...  I'd  like  to  kick  that  type.  Smirking 
asses." 

"  Emasculated  bookworms,"  said  Crowley. 

Crowley  prided  himself  on  his  taste  in  cigars,  and  his 
housekeeper  made  excellent  coffee.  When  they  had  just 
settled  down  to  the  enjoyment  of  both  Bernard  glanced 
casually  at  his  watch. 

"  Great  Scott!  "  he  cried.     "  Eight  o'clock." 

"  No  hurry,"  said  Crowley  calmly. 

"  Isn't  the  parade  at  eight  ?  " 

"  My  dear  Bernard,  don't  you  know  the  national  failing? 
In  Dublin  eight  o'clock  means  half  past,  and  in  the  country 
it  means  half-past  nine." 

"  Not  in  my  command,"  said  Bernard.  "  In  my  company 
in  Dublin  the  men  have  to  be  in  the  hall  five  minutes  before 
the  fall-in  or  we  send  them  away." 

"  You'll  find  it  hard  to  break  the  countrymen  into 
that." 

"  It  was  hard  to  break  the  Dublin  men  in  at  first.  But 
I  gave  them  a  stiff  lecture  on  discipline  once:  told  them 
how  we  lost  the  battle  of  New  Ross:  it  had  a  great  effect. 
Nobody's  ever  late  now." 


420  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Well,  nobody'll  be  in  time  tonight  anyway,  so  you 
needn't  waste  that  J.  S.  Murias." 

Shortly  before  nine  Crowley  got  out  his  motor  and  they 
drove  over  to  the  meeting-place,  the  field  of  a  friendly  farmer 
some  five  miles  away.  About  twenty  men  were  already 
assembled  when  they  arrived,  and  half  a  dozen  more  strag- 
gled in  during  the  next  quarter  of  an  hour.  Under  the 
cold  light  of  the  moon  Bernard  drilled  them:  a  weird  and 
romantic  experience.  Upon  how  many  such  assemblies  had 
that  disc  looked  down  through  the  long  history  of  Ireland's 
passion?  Fenians,  Confederates,  United  Irishmen, —  all  had 
drilled  and  marched  in  turn  under  her  gentle  light.  She 
had  watched  the  tide  of  hope  and  despair  generation  after 
generation,  and  was  still  watching  —  for  what?  The 
ghosts  of  Ninety-Eight  and  Forty-Eight  and  Sixty-Seven 
seemed  to  be  abroad  that  night. 

In  the  shadow  of  a  hedge  a  policeman  stood  taking  notes. 

6 

The  silvery  sun  of  early  summer  had  deepened  to  burn- 
ished gold:  the  air  currents  were  hot  and  sluggish:  the 
foliage  of  the  trees  was  darkened  and  bedraggled.  It  was 
August.  Bernard  was  in  Cloughaneely  again,  alone  this 
time.  He  wanted  to  learn  Irish  properly  and  was  living  in 
a  cottage  with  a  couple  of  old  peasants  who  knew  nothing 
else.  He  was  trying  to  re-Gaelicize  himself  thoroughly  in 
every  way:  to  shake  off  the  last  remnants  of  Britishism  that 
still  tinged  his  ways  of  thought  and  drifted  in  his  Huguenot 
blood.  He  wanted  to  catch  some  of  that  old  Irish  spirit 
which  he  had  by  some  intuition  dimly  perceived  among  the 
people  of  Leinster  and  which  was  to  be  the  foundation  of 
the  polity  which  lay  half-formed  in  his  brain.  He  set  out 
to  study  the  people.  He  had  long  conversations  (dull  in 
matter,  most  of  them,  and  full  of  linguistic  difficulties;  for 
the  Irish  of  Donegal  is  a  harsher,  flatter  language  than  one 
learns  in  the  Gaelic  League  in  Dublin)  with  his  Fear  Tiff  he 
and  Beann-a-tighe.  He  would  stand  and  chat  with  people 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  421 

on  the  roadside;  he  talked  with  the  shop-keepers  and  with 
the  kelp-burners  on  the  beach.  He  admired  the  quiet  dig- 
nity of  all  these  people :  they  had  neither  the  subservience  of 
the  English  rustic  nor  the  effusive  familiarity  of  the  Dublin 
demos.  Their  manners  had  the  grace  of  simple  charity 
untainted  by  pretentiousness  or  servility.  They  were  the 
children  of  the  dispossessed  Gael,  and  they  seemed  to  know 
it. 

Yet  there  was  a  certain  worldliness  in  some  of  them  that 
disappointed  Bernard.  Frequently  he  would  meet  some  one 
who  would  express  surprise  that  one  like  him  should  come 
there  to  learn  a  language  for  which  they  could  see  no  use, 
and  when,  in  his  halting  Irish,  he  would  try  to  explain  his 
motives  they  would  only  laugh  at  him.  He  found  little 
sympathy  for  the  purity  and  ardour  of  his  national  ideas 
either:  he  saw  none  of  the  fiery  political  enthusiasm  of 
Dublin:  Volunteering  was  dead  in  the  county.  There 
was  an  apathetic  patience  about  the  people  that  galled  him 
and  roused  him  to  indignation  that  could  find  no  expression 
in  his  broken  Irish.  As  for  the  war  their  attitude  of  detach- 
ment from  it  was  sublime.  Even  in  Dublin  that  conflict 
was  beginning  to  take  a  back  place  in  people's  thoughts: 
in  the  country  generally  it  was  a  thing  of  small  importance: 
here  in  the  Gaedhealteacht  it  was  treated  with  complete  in- 
difference. 

"  Ireland  is  a  neutral  country  if  ever  there  was  one," 
Bernard  reflected.  "  And  our  politicians  are  telling  the 
world  we're  heart  and  soul  with  the  Allies.  ...  I  wish 
old  Willoughby  was  here." 

Willoughby  was  then  at  the  front,  in  the  trenches  before 
Ypres,  whence  he  frequently  wrote  to  Bernard.  He  had 
ceased  to  mention  Ireland  in  these  letters.  With  the  best 
will  in  the  world  he  was  unable  to  see  Bernard's  point  of 
view,  and,  knowing  Bernard  as  he  did  and  being  satisfied 
that  he  was  pursuing  the  course  he  considered  right,  he  had 
decided  to  drop  the  subject.  He  insisted,  however,  on  the 
righteousness  of  Britain's  case  in  the  war,  and  Bernard,  not 


422  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

caring  for  the  ungrateful  task  of  decrying  the  cause  for  which 
his  friend  was  risking  his  life,  received  these  pleadings  in 
silence.  .  .  . 

During  his  second  fortnight  at  Cloughaneely  Mabel  ar- 
rived on  the  scene.  In  the  office  in  which  she  worked  she 
had  made  friends  with  another  girl,  an  enthusiastic  Gael, 
who  had  succeeded  in  imparting  some  of  her  spirit  to 
Mabel  and  inducing  her  to  agree  that  they  should  spend 
their  annual  holiday  together  in  the  Gaedhealteacht :  a  step 
to  which  certain  conspiring  with  Bernard  lent  added  attrac- 
tions. Her  friend  was  none  too  pleased  to  learn  at  the  last 
minute  that  Mabel's  fiance  was  at  Cloughaneely,  foreseeing 
many  afternoons  when  she  would  be  abandoned  to  her  own 
company,  but  Mabel  paid  no  attention  to  her  ill-humour. 

"  You  can  go  and  learn  your  old  Irish,"  she  said  in  reply 
to  certain  forebodings  expressed  by  the  disappointed  one. 
"  I'm  out  for  a  holiday." 

She  put  an  end  to  Bernard's  studies,  linguistic  and  psy- 
chological, immediately  on  her  arrival,  but  he  had  grown 
to  be  so  lonely  without  her  that  he  did  not  mind.  Mabel 
abandoned  her  friend  altogether  to  her  own  devices  and 
spent  nearly  the  whole  of  each  day  with  Bernard. 

"  What  would  mother  say  if  she  knew  ?  "  she  exclaimed. 

"  We're  engaged,  aren't  we?  "  said  Bernard. 

"  Yes,  but  she's  so  proper.  She's  always  telling  me  not 
to  see  too  much  of  you.  I  think  she  thinks  we  might  get 
tired  of  each  other." 

"As  if  we  could!" 

"  As  if  we  could!  " 

Kisses. 

"  I've  been  having  a  dreadful  time  since  you  left,"  went 
on  Mabel.  "  Jack's  always  bringing  up  officer  friends  from 
the  Curragh,  and  I  have  to  entertain  them.  .  .  .  Such 
frightful  bores  as  they  are!  " 

"  Why  do  you  have  to  entertain  them  ?  Couldn't  Molly 
or  Susan  do  it?  " 

"  Mother  insists  that  7  must.     She  says  a  doctor's  wife 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  423 

must  get  used  to  entertaining  people.  .  .  .  Have  you  any 
more  patients  yet  ?  " 

"A  few." 

"  Why  isn't  there  a  plague  of  some  sort?  " 

"  Modern  sanitation's  too  good,  I'm  afraid." 

"  Well,  I  don't  see  how  we're  going  to  get  married  with- 
out it." 

"  Life  is  long,  my  dear." 

"  But  youth  isn't.     I'll  be  passee  in  another  ten  years." 

"  Not  for  me,  darling." 

"  So  you  think  now.     But  wait " 

"  Don't  you  trust  me,  dear?  " 

"  Men  are  all  the  same." 

"  Hm.     What  do  you  know  about  men,  miss?" 

"  I've  learnt  a  lot  these  last  few  weeks." 

"How?" 

"  Those  Curragh  officers." 

"Damn  them!" 

"  Are  you  jealous?  " 

"Have  I  need  to  be?" 

"  Ah !     That's  the  question." 

"Mabel!     Havel?" 

"  No,  dear.     Don't  be  silly.     I  hate  them  .  .  ." 

"  What'll  Miss  Mulligan  be  doing  without  you  all  this 
time?  " 

"  Oh,  bother  Miss  Mulligan.  .  .  .  Are  you  comfortable 
in  that  cottage,  dear?" 

"  Tolerably.  But  it's  rat-haunted.  I  don't  mind  con- 
fessing I'm  afraid  of  rats.  .  .  .  Beastly  things." 

"  I  don't  mind  rats  a  bit,  but  I'm  terrified  of  mice." 

"  That's  silly.     They're  so  tiny." 

"  Exactly.     That's  why." 

"  Rats  are  repulsive  things,  and  when  I  was  a  boy  I  read 
a  story  of  a  man  who  was  eaten  alive  by  them,  so  I've  had  a 
horror  of  them  ever  since.  ...  I  can  tell  you  it  gives  me 
the  creeps  to  hear  them  scampering  about  the  floor  at  night.'* 

"  Silly  old  boy!  ...  What  a  lovely  sunset!  .  .  ." 


424  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Miss  Mulligan  made  great  progress  in  Irish  that  fort- 
night for  she  scarcely  saw  anything  of  Mabel.  The  lovers 
enjoyed  each  other's  society  undiluted  day  after  day.  They 
cycled  together  to  the  foot  of  Errigal,  to  Dunlewy  Lake, 
to  Magheroarty:  they  climbed  Muckish:  they  sailed  to  Inish- 
bofin.  This  was  perhaps  the  happiest  part  of  their  court- 
ship: the  period  of  questioning  was  over  and  they  had  come 
to  the  period  of  acceptance.  The  things  in  which  they  were 
in  accord  seemed  infinitely  more  important  than  the  things 
in  which  they  were  incompatible,  and  the  sweetness  of  kisses 
compensated  for  the  bitterness  of  misunderstanding.  They 
had  a  kind  of  romantic  tolerance  for  each  other  which  is  an 
infinitely  better  basis  for  marriage  than  romantic  illusion, 
but  unfortunately  in  their  case,  while  it  was  Mabel's  defi- 
ciencies that  Bernard  tolerated,  her  tolerance  was  for  his 
virtues.  Still  for  the  present  they  were  very  happy,  for 
no  coming  events  cast  their  shadows  over  the  bogland  of 
Tirconnell. 

"  Sandy  must  be  in  action  by  this  time,"  said  Bernard 
one  evening  as  they  wandered  by  the  seashore.  (Sandy  had 
sailed  with  the  Tenth  Division  for  the  Dardanelles  some 
weeks  before.)  "  I  wonder  how  these  fellows  manage  to 
summon  up  any  feeling  against  the  poor  old  Turk.  The 
only  time  he  ever  came  in  contact  with  Ireland  was  to  send 
us  foodships  in  the  famine, —  God  bless  him." 

There  was  a  green  and  gold  sunset  behind  the  black 
sprawling  bulk  of  the  Bloody  Foreland.  Inland  was  a  wild 
waste  of  bog  and  heather  sparsely  scattered  with  cottages. 
Billows  from  the  Arctic  thudded  on  the  shore.  Little 
heaps  of  burning  seaweed  on  the  sand  sent  up  fumes  of  vio- 
let smoke.  At  one  of  the  heaps  three  cottagers  were  hold- 
ing an  animated  conversation.  Bernard  stopped  to  listen 
to  the  music  of  the  Irish  tongue  .  .  . 

"  This  is  the  real  Ireland,"  he  said  at  last  to  Mabel. 

"  It's  a  dull  place,"  said  Mabel;  then  seeing  a  shadow 
pass  over  his  face  she  added:  "  But  not  when  you're  here, 
darling." 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  425 

7 

Insatiably  the  world  went  on  slaughtering  its  sons:  reck- 
less sterilizing  butchery.  An  empty  earth  was  the  prospect 
anticipated  by  those  who  dared  to  think. 

Bernard  still  used  to  receive  the  Ashbury  Chronicle,  which 
showed  an  ever-lengthening  Roll  of  Honour.  Of  his  own 
contemporaries,  Sedgwick,  his  one-time  football  captain,  had 
been  killed  at  Ypres ;  Reppington  and  Lashworthy  at  Neuve 
Chapelle;  and  his  friend  Murray,  crying:  "  Ireland  for 
ever!  "  at  the  head  of  his  company  of  Liverpool  Irish,  fell 
riddled  with  machine-gun  bullets  on  the  slag-heaps  of  Loos. 

When  Bernard  returned  to  town  towards  the  end  of  Au- 
gust Suvla  Bay  had  been  fought  and  won,  and  that  strip 
of  sun-baked  beach  had  cost  the  quenching  of  laughter  in 
thousands  of  Irish  homes.  Half  the  people  he  knew  were  in 
mourning  and  he  found  his  mother  pale  and  anxious,  every 
day  expecting  one  of  those  fatal  telegrams  .  .  .  • 

It  was  Sir  Eugene  who  received  it  when  it  did  come,  and 
he  went  and  told  her  the  news. 

"Wounded!  "  she  cried,  and  gave  a  great  sigh  of  relief. 
"Thank  God,"  she  said  fervently;  for  to  be  wounded  in 
the  Great  War  was  the  best  chance  of  life. 

8 

Stephen  and  Hektor  sat  one  evening  in  the  smoking-room 
of  the  Hotel  Neptune. 

"  I'd  like  to  know  your  opinion  of  Austin  Mallow,"  said 
Hektor.  "  Is  he  a  knave  or  a  fool?  " 

"  There's  a  little  of  both  in  every  man,"  replied  Stephen. 
"What  particular  knavery  or  folly  do  you  suspect  in 
Mallow?" 

"  Well,  I  was  over  at  his  place  the  other  day  and  he  be- 
gan to  talk  in  an  offhand  way  about  rebellions  and  things. 
He  asked  me  what  I  thought  of  the  chances  of  a  rebellion 
nowadays.  '  Nil,'  said  I.  He  asked  me  would  I  be  against 
a  rebellion.  '  Sure  thing,'  said  I.  '  A  rebellion  without 
some  chances  of  success  would  be  a  mug's  game.'  '  It  all 


426  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

depends  on  what  you  mean  by  success  or  failure,'  says  he. 
'  Was  Robert  Emmet  a  failure?  '  '  A  fiasco,'  said  I.  '  Then 
you  think  his  military  failure  was  enough  to  condemn  his 
action?'  says  he.  'No,'  says  I.  'But  before  you  under- 
take a  rebellion  you  must  have  good  grounds  to  hope  for 
military  success.  Perhaps  he  had  them,'  says  I,  '  and  perhaps 
he  hadn't.  I  don't  know.'  '  Then,'  says  he,  '  you  don't 
think  a  moral  success  any  compensation  for  a  military  fail- 
ure?' 'I'm  a  soldier,  not  a  philosopher,'  says  I.  'And 
you  think  there's  no  chance  for  a  rising  now  ?  '  says  he. 
'  Not  a  scrap,'  says  I.  '  Don't  you  think,'  says  he,  '  that  if 
we  fired  the  spark  in  Dublin  the  whole  country  would  blaze 
up  like  a  power-magazine.'  '  Well,'  says  I,  '  if  you  will 
talk  in  metaphors,  the  country  isn't  a  powder-magazine. 
It's  a  wet  bog.  Besides,  if  the  country  did  rise,  what  would 
be  the  use?  There  aren't  ten  thousand  rifles  in  the  place. 
An  insurrection  without  foreign  help  would  be  squelched  in 
a  week.'  '  I  doubt  it,'  says  he.  Now  is  that  man  as  big  a 
fool  as  I  think  him?  You're  on  the  Executive  and  see 
more  of  him  than  I  do.  What  do  you  think?  " 

"  I  must  have  a  talk  with  him  myself,"  said  Stephen. 

A  few  days  later  he  got  into  conversation  with  Austin 
at  the  end  of  a  meeting  of  the  Executive  and,  after  accom- 
panying him  part  of  the  way  home,  was  invited  to  come 
the  whole  way  and  have  a  cup  of  tea.  This  was  served 
not  in  the  sitting-room  but  in  Austin's  own  sanctum,  a  small 
room  at  the  top  of  the  house,  the  principal  article  of  whose 
furniture  was  a  roll-top  desk  littered  with  sheets  of  paper 
on  which  were  scribbled  the  beginnings  and  rough-drafts 
of  poems,  and  with  the  manuscripts  of  contributors  to 
Manannan.  Amateurish  water-colours  and  crayon-sketches 
—  evidently  Austin's  own  —  covered  the  walls,  and  there 
were  some  weird  symbolic  designs  in  oils  on  the  panels  of 
the  door.  Austin  lit  the  fire  which  was  set  in  the  grate, 
changed  his  coat  for  the  Japanese  gown  he  had  worn  on 
Stephen's  former  visit,  and  poured  out  the  tea,  which  Theo- 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  427 

dosia  brought  in,  with  a  yellowish  bony  hand  that  trembled 
with  the  effort  of  lifting  the  pot. 

"  How's  the  war  going  these  days?  "  he  said.  "  I  seldom 
read  the  newspapers." 

"  Much  the  same.  I  think  it's  fairly  evident  now  that 
the  Germans  aren't  going  to  win  a  military  victory." 

"  Do  you  really  think  so?  " 

"  I'm  certain  of  it.  The  best  we  can  hope  for  now  is  a 
draw." 

"  That'll  be  as  bad  for  us  as  a  British  victory." 

"  Nothing  of  the  kind.  It  might  even  prove  better  than 
a  German  victory:  I  distrust  all  great  Powers.  It  looks 
as  if  the  big  nations  will  go  on  fighting  to  exhaustion  point, 
and  then  comes  our  chance  to  wring  good  terms  out  of  Eng- 
land." 

"  But  we  don't  want  terms.  It's  independence  now  or 
never.  I've  talked  to  several  of  the  Executive  about  it,  and 
they've  mostly  agreed  that  now  is  the  time  to  strike." 

"  But  why?  " 

"  Isn't  England  fighting  the  strongest  enemy  she's  ever 
had  or  ever  likely  to  have?  You  don't  get  European  wars 
more  than  once  in  a  century.  If  physical  force  is  ever  to 
justify  itself  it  must  be  now  when  the  enemy  is  at  his  weak- 
est." 

"  But  he  isn't  at  his  weakest.  So  far  from  weakening 
England  the  war  strengthens  her.  Her  armies  are  five 
times  as  large  as  they  were  in  peace  time  and  she  wouldn't 
miss  the  number  that  would  be  required  to  flatten  us  in  a 
month.  What  forces  have  we?  Twenty  thousand  men 
at  the  most,  and  less  than  two- thirds  of  them  armed ;  and 
we  haven't  ammunition  to  last  three  days'  hard  fighting. 
My  dear  Mallow,  we  haven't  the  ghost  of  a  chance." 

"  I  don't  believe  our  chance  is  as  poor  as  you  think,  but 
in  any  case  I  hold  that  the  fight  itself  is  the  thing.  If  we 
fail,  we  fail,  but  at  least  it  can  be  said  that  we  tried.  We've 
been  too  long  without  bloodshed  and  in  consequence  the 


428  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

national  spirit  is  decaying  and  giving  way  to  Imperialism. 
We  must  redeem  the  people  by  sacrifice." 

"  Don't  you  worry  about  the  people.  The  present  im- 
perial tint  is  only  skin  deep,  and  it's  wearing  off  already. 
Conditions  aren't  nearly  so  desperate  as  to  need  desperate 
remedies.  If  the  people  were  really  beginning  to  think 
imperially,  to  regard  themselves  as  British,  to  regard  the 
Union  Jack  as  their  flag,  to  talk  of  the  British  fleet  and  army 
as  theirs,  then  perhaps  a  blood-sacrifice  might  be  required 
to  redeem  them.  But  they  aren't  doing  anything  of  the 
kind.  They're  getting  less  pro-British  every  day.  The 
young  men  are  coming  into  the  Volunteers.  The  Volun- 
teers are  rapidly  becoming  a  formidable  weapon:  they're 
steadily  arming  and  drilling  and  learning  to  shoot:  they're 
a  fine  disciplined  force  of  the  best  material  you  could  get 
anywhere.  If  we  only  keep  on  as  we're  going,  when  the 
war  ends  we'll  be  able  to  put  up  a  stiff  demand  to  England, 
well-backed  with  bayonets  and  with  a  united  people  behind 
us.  To  go  into  rebellion  simply  means  the  smash  up  of  our 
movement  and  a  fresh  disarmament  of  the  country,  and  giv- 
ing the  English  a  closer  grip  on  us  than  ever.  That  might 
possibly  produce  a  nation  of  ardent  patriots,  but  I  think  our 
armed  handful  more  useful.  .  .  .  Besides,  the  country 
doesn't  want  a  rebellion,  and  a  minority  must  assume  in- 
fallibility before  it  can  presume  to  commit  the  remainder. 

Austin  Mallow  was  silent  a  moment. 

"  Yes,"  he  said  at  length,  "  I  quite  see  the  force  of  your 
arguments.  I  admit  that  they're  convincing,  and  I  can  find 
no  answer  to  them.  But  still,  I  feel  that  I'm  right." 

"Great  Scott!"  cried  Stephen.  "Do  you  mean  to  say 
that  you'd  plunge  us  into  rebellion  in  face  of  arguments  you 
admit  to  be  convincing,  just  because  of  some  vague  feeling 
that  it  might  be  a  good  thing?  " 

"  How  could  I  plunge  you  into  anything  against  your 
will?  "  said  Austin.  "  I'm  merely  expressing  my  own  feel- 
ing." 

"  Were  you  ?  "  thought  Stephen,  and  drank  some  tea.     He 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY,  429 

watched  Mallow  while  he  did  so  and  noticed  that  his  yellow- 
ish face  was  working  with  some  strange  excitement.  His 
last  words  were  evidently  an  attempt  to  lull  the  suspicions 
which  he  felt  he  had  roused  in  Stephen,  but  his  self-control 
was  insufficient  to  make  them  convincing.  Stephen  could 
see  that  Austin  was  literally  bursting  with  revelations  and 
in  a  state  to  blurt  out  anything.  He  accordingly  put  on  an 
air  of  obtuseness  and  said : 

"  However  we  may  speculate  in  theory,  the  whole  notion 
of  a  rebellion  in  these  unromantic  days  is  rather  laughable, 
isn't  it?" 

Austin,  looking  at  Stephen,  saw  only  a  commonplace  scep- 
tic lounging  in  an  armchair,  and  felt  that  he  might  safely 
give  vent  to  the  revelations  which  were  tearing  him. 
Stephen,  looking  up  under  lowered  lids,  saw  Austin  rise, 
contorted  like  the  Delphian  priestess. 

"  Fool!  "  cried  Austin.  "You  think  your  cool  reasoning 
can  dispose  of  anything.  But  there  are  things  above  reason. 
I've  seen  you  laugh  over  my  poetry:  I  know  you  laugh  at 
me  and  at  all  poets.  But  we  poets  are  often  prophets:  I'm 
a  prophet." 

"  Yes,"  replied  Stephen.  "  I  dare  say.  It  must  be  jolly 
useful.  What  time  is  it?  " 

He  had  learnt  as  much  as  he  wanted,  and  he  took  an  early 
leave. 

"  Mallow,"  he  said  to  Hektor  afterwards,  "  is  such  a  fool 
that  his  folly  is  quite  as  mischievous  as  conscious  double- 
dealing.  He  needs  watching.  What  can  you  do  with  a 
man  who  is  convinced  that  he's  wrong  and  yet  feels  that 
he's  right?" 

9 

"  Things  are  bucking  up  here  under  your  regime,"  said 
Crowley.  "  Twenty  new  recruits  this  week,  and  we  got 
sixty  odd  during  September." 

"  That's  all  very  well,"  said  Bernard,  "  but  I  can't  un- 
derstand why  we  don't  do  even  better." 

"  National  purity  of  the  Gael,  my  boy.     He's  afraid  tq 


430  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

look  on  Freedom  in  naked  beauty,  and  likes  her  to  be  de- 
cently clothed." 

There  was  a  heavy  rat-tat  at  the  hall-door  at  this  mo- 
ment, and  presently  the  house-keeper  came  in  and  in  an  agi- 
tated voice  announced  that  a  policeman  wanted  to  speak  to 
Mr.  Lascelles. 

"  Unsolicited  testimonial  to  your  organizing  abilities, 
Bernard,"  said  Crowley.  "  Slip  out  by  the  window  there 
and  buzz  off  in  the  car.  I'll  blarney  them  for  a  bit." 

"  I  don't  believe  they  want  to  arrest  me,"  said  Bernard, 
"  or  they'd  have  come  right  in  without  ceremony.  "  How 
many  are  there,  did  you  say  ?  " 

"  Only  one,  sir,"  said  the  housekeeper.  "  He's  got  a  letter 
in  his  hand,  I  think  he  wants  to  give  you." 

"  Well,  show  the  blighter  in,"  said  Crowley,  cocking  a 
revolver  which  he  took  from  a  drawer  and  placed  in  his 
pocket  in  case  of  necessity. 

The  woman  withdrew  and  ushered  in  a  bashfully  blushing, 
young  constable,  who,  avoiding  Crowley 's  scornful  glance,, 
handed  a  long  official  envelope  to  Bernard,  saying: 

"  Me  ordhers  is  to  deliver  this  into  your  hands." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  Bernard.     "  I'm  much  obliged." 

The  constable  shuffled  shyly  with  his  feet  for  a  moment 
and  then  awkwardly  stalked  out. 

"  Rather  an  unimposing  instrument  of  tyranny,"  said 
Crowley.  "  What  have  we  here?  " 

Bernard  opened  the  envelope  and  they  read  the  enclosed 
document,  which  said  that  whereas  Bernard  Lascelles,  physi- 
cian, had  in  sundry  ways  promoted  disaffection  among  his 
Majesty's  subjects  and  been  guilty  of  acts  prejudicial  to 
recruitment  for  his  Majesty's  forces  in  and  about  the  town- 
land  of  Ballylangan,  the  competent  military  authorities,  un- 
der the  powers  conferred  on  them  by  the  Defence  of  the 
Realm  Act,  hereby  ordered  the  said  Bernard  Lascelles,  physi- 
cian, to  quite  the  following  area,  namely  Ireland,  within 
ten  days  of  the  receipt  of  the  order,  failure  to  obey  which 
would  involve  severe  penally. 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  431 

"  New  motto  for  the  Party,"  said  Bernard.  " '  Ireland 
an  area.  .  .  .  An  Area  Once  Again'  What?" 

"  This  looks  bad  for  you,  old  man,"  said  Crowley. 
"What'll  you  do?" 

"  Consult  headquarters  when  I  go  back  to  town.  We've 
half  a  dozen  other  organizers  on  the  road,  and  they'll  prob- 
ably all  be  in  the  same  boat.  ...  I  wonder  which  is  the 
more  unpleasant  life,  dodging  arrest  or  going  to  jail." 

*'  Not  much  to  choose  between  them,  I  fancy." 

"  I'm  damned  if  I  leave  my  country,  anyway,  for  any 
Hasted  English  general,"  said  Bernard  .  .  . 

When  he  arrived  at  Headquarters  next  day  he  found  two 
'Other  organizers  who  had  received  similar  orders  awaiting 
the  decision  of  the  Executive,  which  was  in  session  upstairs, 
as  to  their  course  of  action.  Presently  Umpleby,  who  had 
ibeen  organizing  in  the  South,  came  in. 

"  What?     You  too?  "  cried  Bernard. 

Umpleby  ruefully  produced  the  familiar  envelope. 

"  I'll  write  to  every  paper  in  the  country  to  denounce  this 
tyranny,"  he  said. 

"  Will  you !  "  said  Bernard.  "  Not  if  the  Executive 
knows  it.  You'll  obey  order,  my  son,  and  that  won't  be  one 
of  them." 

"  But  the  world  should  know  of  this.  We  must  have 
publicity,  Lascelles.  Never  in  the  whole  history  of  the 
tyranny  of  big  nations  over  small  ones  [hot  even  in  Ninety- 
Eight  with  all  its  horrors,  Jan  ancestor  of  mine,  I  believe, 
was  flogged  and  pitch-capped  in  those  days  (he  survived  it 
too,  poor  devil)  j]  do  we  hear  of  such  high-handed,  bar- 
barous, unrelenting  .  .  ." 

He  was  interrupted  by  the  entry  of  Stephen,  who  came 
to  communicate  the  decision  of  the  Executive.  The  order 
was  to  be  completely  disregarded  and  organizing  carried  on 
as  usual. 

"  What  about  informing  the  press?  "  asked  Umpleby. 

"  That  will  be  done  officially,"  replied  Stephen. 

Bernard  went  home  in  pensive  mood.     He  felt  no  heroic 


432  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

exultation  in  suffering  for  the  cause.  He  dreaded  the  pros- 
pect of  gaol.  He  suffered  in  advance  in  his  imagination 
the  discomforts,  the  coarseness,  the  vile  food,  the  loneliness 
of  prison  life.  .  .  .  And  what  would  Mabel  say?  .  .  . 

"  Bah!  Let's  forget  it,"  he  said,  shaking  himself.  "  I've 
ten  days'  freedom  anyhow.  I'll  make  the  most  of  them." 

"  Swathythe,"  he  said  when  he  reached  home,  "  I  suppose 
you  are  aware  that  I'm  an  enemy  to  your  country?  " 
"  Yes,  sir,'  said  Swathythe. 
"You  don't  object,  Swathythe?  " 
"  No,  sir." 

"  It  isn't  against  your  conscience  to  serve  me?  " 
"  No  conscience,  sir.     Can't  afford  such  luxuries." 
"  Sometimes,  Swathythe,  you  talk  like  Lord  Goring's  valet 
in  An  Ideal  Husband." 

"  Yes,  sir.  I  always  strive  to  model  myself  upon  him." 
"  Hm.  Well,  look  here,  Swathythe,  I'm  going  to  entrust 
some  of  my  affairs  to  you.  I've  had  the  honour  of  engaging 
the  attention  of  the  military  authorities  of  your  Imperial 
country,  and  the  possibilities  are  that  I  shall  find  myself  in 
gaol  very  shortly." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  sir?  " 
"  I  say,  I  may  find  myself  in  gaol,  Swathythe." 
"  I'm  afraid  that  puts  a  different  complexion  on  the  case, 
sir." 

"  I  thought  you'd  no  conscience,  Swathythe?  " 
"  Quite  true,  sir.     But  I've  my  prospects  to  consider.     It 
wouldn't  do  me  no  good,  sir,  to  have  served  a  gentleman  as 
'ad  been  in  gaol,  sir, —  if  you'll  excuse  me,  sir." 

"  Don't  mention  it,  Swathythe.     So  I  can't  rely  on  you?  " 
"  No,  sir.     And  if  you  anticipate  an  early  arrest,  sir,  I 
should  be  much  obliged  if  you  would  make  it  convenient 
to  dispense  with  my  services  as  soon  as  possible." 

"  Certainly,  Swathythe.  You  can  take  yourself  to  the 
devil  at  once  if  you  like.  Only  you'll  get  no  wages  in  lieu 
of  notice." 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  433 

"  Perfectly  satisfied,  sir,"  said  Swathythe,  and  withdrew 
obsequiously. 

"  What  will  life  be  without  Swathythe?  "  cried  Bernard. 
"  Oh,  Ireland,  you  expect  too  much  of  your  sons." 

Then  Mabel  had  to  be  told.  She  fairly  broke  down  and 
cried  when  she  heard  the  news,  and  Bernard,  after  some 
clumsy  and  unavailing  attempts  to  console  her,  stood  by 
helplessly  waiting  for  the  storm  to  subside.  It  was  at  her 
own  home  that  this  happened,  but  fortunately  Mrs.  Harvey 
was  out. 

"  Everything  seems  against  us,"  sobbed  Mabel.  "  I  don't 
believe  we'll  ever  be  married.  .  .  .  Where  will  you  go  to? 
How  long  will  you  have  to  stay  away?  " 

"  I'm  not  going  anywhere." 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do,  then  ?  " 

"I'm  just  going  to  sit  tight." 

"But  ...   ?  " 

Bernard  explained.  He  might  be  forcibly  deported:  he 
might  be  imprisoned:  he  would  know  for  certain  in  a  few 
days.  Mabel's  grief  burst  forth  afresh. 

"  Oh,  Bernard,  how  could  you?     What  will  mother  say?  " 

"  Dash  your  mother,"  said  Bernard  irritably.  "  You 
don't  think  I  like  going  to  prison,  do  you?  " 

She  was  repentant  in  a  moment. 

"  Don't  mind  me,  dear.  I'm  horrid  and  selfish,  I  know. 
But  oh,  how  I'll  miss  you,  Bernard." 

"  Never  mind.  It  can't  be  for  ever,  and  we'll  have  a 
good  time  these  next  ten  days,  won't  we?  " 

She  smiled  through  her  tears  .  .  . 

They  made  the  most  of  his  ten  days'  freedom.  October 
was  drawing  to  a  close,  damp  and  chilly,  but  they  contrived 
to  have  at  least  one  good  walk  together,  and  they  went  to 
many  theatres  and  picture  houses. 

"  How  does  your  mother  take  it?  "  Bernard  asked  once. 

"  She  hasn't  said  a  word,"  replied  Mabel. 

Bernard  whistled  and  said: 


434  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  That's  ominous  .  .  ." 

He  produced  two  pink  pieces  of  cardboard  from  his  pocket. 

"  What  about  a  last  dance  together?  "  he  said.  "  Thurs- 
day may  be  my  last  day  of  freedom, —  or  my  last  day  in  Ire- 
land. Let's  make  it  a  pleasant  one  .  .  ." 

"  Oh,  my  dear,"  cried  Mabel.  "  Why,  why,  why  do 
things  like  this  happen  ?  ...  Is  it  all  a  nightmare  ?  "  .  .  . 

Malone  read  the  deportation  order  with  grim  satisfaction. 

"  Perhaps  you'll  admit  now,"  he  said,  "  that  the  time  has 
come  to  fight." 

"  I  don't,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Are  you  going  to  wait  until  all  the  leaders  are  jailed  or 
deported  then?  If  you  don't  fight  now  you're  disgraced." 

"  We're  a  military  movement,"  said  Bernard,  "  and  we 
take  our  orders  from  our  officers  without  criticism.  We're 
the  first  disciplined  movement  Ireland  ever  had." 

"  I'd  think  more  of  a  movement  that  wanted  to  fight," 
said  Malone. 

10 

On  a  raw  morning  at  the  beginning  of  November  Bernard 
and  O'Dwyer  saw  Eugene  off  from  Westland  Row  Station 
bound  for  the  Western  Front.  They  stood  on  the  platform 
together,  but  they  could  say  little.  Bernard  and  O'Dwyer 
hated  the  cause  in  which  he  was  going  to  fight,  but  Eugene 
was  going  in  all  good  faith  to  fight,  as  he  thought,  for  Ire- 
land :  so  there  was  little  to  say. 

They  stamped  their  feet  on  the  platform  and  clapped 
their  gloved  hands  and  exclaimed  frequently: 

"  By  Jove,  it's  cold." 

"  Queer  situation!  "  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Two  Sinn  Feiners 
seeing  off  a  British  officer.  It  would  make  an  Englishman 
.stare." 

"  I  suppose  Englishmen  think  Sinn  Feiners  have  horns  and 
a  tail,"  said  Bernard. 

"  I  hope  we  Irish  soldiers  will  patch  up  that  eternal 
quarrel,"  said  Eugene.  "Bernard,  I  hope  you  aren't  in  for 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  435 

too  bad  a  time.  I  hate  to  think  of  you  in  a  prison  cell  in 
weather  like  this." 

"  Or  any  weather,"  laughed  Bernard.  "  Win  a  V.C.  and 
they  might  reprieve  me  on  the  strength  of  it." 

"  Not  much  chance  of  that,  I'm  afraid.  I'm  not  built  o£ 
very  soldierly  stuff." 

Indeed  it  was  hard  to  imagine  those  mild  blue  eyes  lit 
with  the  spirit  of  battle,  or  those  soft  and  gentle  hands  deal- 
ing out  death.  War  and  Eugene  seemed  things  incompatible. 

"  What  a  decent,  kindly  fellow  Eugene  is,"  thought  Ber- 
nard, and  regretted  the  smallness  of  their  intercourse  to- 
gether. "Has  my  neglect  hurt  him?"  he  wondered. 
"  How  unkindly  I've  sometimes  spoken  to  him,"  he  reflected 
bitterly.  "  I've  never  concealed  my  thinking  him  a  fool: 
and  he's  no  fool."  He  made  great  resolves  for  the  future: 
he  and  Eugene  were  to  be  friends,  and  more  than  friends. 

Eugene  got  into  the  railway  carriage  and  stood  leaning 
out  of  the  window.  The  train  began  to  move  slowly. 

"  Good-bye,  old  man.     Good  luck !  "  said  O'Dwyer. 

"  Good  luck,"  said  Eugene,  smiling  in  that  grave  way  of 
his. 

Bernard  could  say  nothing  on  account  of  a  choking  lump 
in  his  throat.  He  stood  gazing  after  Eugene's  face,  still 
lit  with  its  kindly  smile,  until  something  blurred  his  vision. 

II 

There  was  no  joy  in  ragtime  nor  solace  in  waltzing  for- 
Bernard  and  Mabel  when  the  tenth  night  came.  Their 
souls  were  tremulous  with  the  imminence  of  parting  and 
they  wanted  to  be  left  alone  together.  Early  in  the  evening 
they  left  the  ball-room  and  retired  to  that  nook  where  nearly 
a  year  ago  they  had  told  their  love.  They  could  say  little, 
but  sat  hand  in  hand,  whispering  to  one  another  now  and 
again  some  tender  phrase. 

"You'll  think  of  me  in  prison  sometimes,  dear?" 
"Sometimes,   did   you   say?     My   darling,    I'll   think  of 
nothing  else  .  .  .  And  you  ?  " 


436  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  I  couldn't  think  of  you  more  than  I  do  already.  All 
day  at  my  work  you're  never  out  of  my  thoughts.  It's  a 
wonder  I  don't  type  your  name  into  the  letters." 

"My  dearest!" 

"  And  can  I  write  to  you  ?  " 

"  Not  for  a  month  .  .  .  What  a  long  month  that  will 
be." 

"  How  short  these  ten  days  have  been." 

"  That  month  will  seem  like  a  thousand  such  days." 

"  Perhaps  they  won't  put  you  in  prison.  Mightn't  they 
deport  you  ?  " 

"  They  might." 

"  Well,  if  they  do,  I'll  come  over  the  sea  and  marry  you." 

"  Will  you,  really?  " 

"  Yes." 

He  kissed  her  then,  but  he  did  not  tell  her  that  he  felt 
sure  that  prison  would  be  his  fate. 

"  Time  seems  long  when  you  look  forward,"  he  said,  "  but 
time  past  seems  very  short.  We've  been  engaged  ten 
months,  and  they've  gone  by  like  three." 

"  Like  a  week,"  said  Mabel. 

"  There  must  be  great  days  in  store  for  Ireland.  They 
seem  a  long  way  ahead  now,  but  when  they  come  we'll  look 
back  on  these  times  and  laugh.  .  .  .  What  shall  I  be  in  the 
Republic?" 

"  Foreign  Secretary." 

"  Ah,  you'd  like  to  be  holding  brilliant  receptions, 
wouldn't  you?  But  I'd  rather  be  Minister  of  Education  or 
head  of  some  department  for  town-planning." 

"  How  dull." 

"  You'd  be  the  chief  guest  at  all  the  school  prize-days  in 
the  country,  or  you  could  give  grand  dinners  to  the  town- 
planning  experts." 

"  I'd  rather  entertain  the  foreign  ambassadors." 

"  You  caa  go  to  the  foreign  secretary's  wife's  receptions. 
That'll  be  that  little  girl  who  was  dancing  with  Felim 
O'Dwyer  tonight." 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  4.37 

"  What  nonsense  we're  talking.  .  .  .  Bernard,  Ireland 
will  never  be  free." 

"  She  will.     And  in  our  lifetime,  too,  with  luck." 

"  It  sounds  so  impossible.  How  long  have  we  been  under 
England?" 

"  Nearly  seven  hundred  and  fifty  years." 

"  And  you  still  hope?  " 

"  England  was  four  hundred  years  under  the  Romans, 
and  people  still  hoped,  and  the  end  of  it  came  at  last.  The 
Roman  Empire  is  dead  and  gone,  and  England  still  lives." 

Discussion  had  made  them  temporarily  forget  the  coming 
separation.  Then  suddenly  Mabel  remembered  it  again,  and 
threw  herself  weeping  into  his  arms. 

"  Our  last  night  together,"  she  cried.  "  My  dear,  can 
nothing  be  done?  " 

He  held  her  and  comforted  her  and  talked  more  nonsense 
to  her  and  made  her  forget  again.  The  evening  sped  by, 
and  they  went  downstairs  and  danced  the  last  waltz  together. 
The  tune  was  Come  Back  to  Erin,  a  favourite  finale,  to 
which  they  had  danced  scores  of  times  in  happier  days. 
Now  the  old  melody  seemed  brimful  of  all  the  tears  ever  shed 
in  Ireland,  yet  with  something  of  hope  arising  through  it. 
Bernard's  mood  was  almost  exultant,  and  Mabel,  looking 
up  at  him  with  tear-dimmed  eyes,  wondered  at  the  expression 
of  his  face  .  .  . 

As  Bernard  was  getting  into  his  overcoat  in  the  dressing- 
room,  Molloy  accosted  him. 

"  Having  a  last  dissipation  ?  "  he  said.  "  I  hear  that  two 
of  your  colleagues  were  arrested  this  evening.  One  of  them 
is  a  client  of  mine,  too:  Umpleby." 

"  We're  making  no  defence,  of  course,"  said  Bernard. 

"  You'll  get  it  all  the  harder  for  that." 

"  Well,  '  'tis  but  in  vain  for  soldiers  to  complain,'  you 
know.  How  are  things  with  you  ?  " 

Just  then  O'Dwyer  rushed  up  to  Bernard  and  said : 

"  You're  done,  old  man.  Three  policemen  and  a  taxi  at 
the  door." 


438  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Damnation,"  said  Bernard.  "  My  G  man's  better  than 
I  knew.  I  thought  I'd  given  him  the  slip." 

"Will  you  try  and  dodge  them?" 

"  Not  worth  it.  May  as  well  take  what's  coming  first  as 
last.  ...  I  say,  will  you  look  after  Mabel  and  see  her 
home?" 

O'Dwyer  having  promised,  they  went  out  and  found 
Mabel  waiting  in  the  hall.  She  took  the  news  quietly  and 
they  went  to  the  lounge  together  to  wait  for  the  crowd  to 
disappear.  In  spite  of  O'Dwyer's  presence  she  held  Ber- 
nard's hand  tight  till  the  end. 

Taxis  hooted  and  whips  cracked  without  and  the  laughing 
throng  melted  away.  Bernard,  Mabel  and  O'Dwyer  arose 
and  went  out.  Two  taxis  stood  by  the  kerb.  One  was  that 
which  Bernard  had  engaged  to  take  Mabel  home:  three 
policemen  stood  by  the  other.  One  of  these  came  forward, 
but  stopped  when  Bernard  said: 

"  It's  all  right.  I  know  what  you  want.  I'll  be  with 
you  in  a  minute." 

He  took  both  Mabel's  hands  in  his  and  said : 

"  Well,  au  revoir,  my  darling." 

Instantly,  she  threw  her  arms  round  his  neck  and  they 
kissed:  a  long  kiss:  feast  of  desire  that  knows  no  surfeit  and 
grows  greater  the  more  it  feeds:  joy  ever  soaring,  yet  reach- 
ing no  culmination;  yearning  and  satisfaction,  bliss  and  woe, 
dominance  and  surrender,  despair  and  triumph,  all  com- 
pounded. Into  that  moment  they  strove  to  pack  all  the 
rapture  of  the  stolen  months  to  come.  Still  unsatisfied,  their 
lips  reluctantly  sundered.  Then,  abruptly,  Bernard  caught 
her  to  him  again  and  kissed  her  fiercely  and  swiftly  once. 
He  pushed  her  from  him  after  that  and  entered  the  taxi 
without  looking  back. 

The  policemen  got  in  clumsily  beside  him. 


AN  AMATEUR  ARMY  439 

12 

"  I  see  that  young  Bernard  Lascelles  has  been  sent  to 
prison,"  said  Lady  Mallaby  Morchoe  to  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke 
in  the  costume  department  at  Switzer's. 

"  Really,"  said  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke.  "  Well,  I'm  not 
surprised.  He's  a  bad  lot  altogether.  Poor  Sir  Eugene!" 

"What  makes  you  think  him  a  bad  lot?"  asked  Lady 
Mallaby  Morchoe. 

"  I'm  afraid  I've  been  indiscreet.  Isn't  it  enough  that 
he's  been  sent  to  prison  ?  " 

"  O,  that's  for  something  political.  What  else  has  he 
done  ?  " 

"  Well,  between  ourselves,  I  saw  him  at  Antwerp  some 
time  ago  in  the  company  of  a  very  shady-looking  woman, 
indeed." 

"  Probably  some  German  agent." 

"  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  ..." 

"Have  you  heard  about  Sir  Eugene  Lascelles'  son?" 
said  Mrs.  Bonegraft  to  Lady  Mallaby  Morchoe  at  the  coun- 
ter in  Mitchell's. 

"  Yes.  I'm  sorry  for  his  father  and  mother,"  said  Lady 
Mallaby  Morchoe. 

"  I  wonder  what  he's  done,"  said  Mrs.  Bonegraft. 

Lady  Mallaby  Morchoe  assumed  a  mystifying  expression. 

"  A  dark  business,"  she  said.  "  German  intrigues  have 
something  to  say  to  it,  and  I  believe  there's  a  woman  at  the 
bottom  of  it." 

"  Dear  me,"  said  Mrs.  Bonegraft.  "  What  sort  of 
woman  ?  " 

"  A  notorious  adventuress,  I  hear,  and  probably  in  Ger- 
man pay.  He  was  seen  all  over  Antwerp  with  her." 

"  Dear,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Bonegraft.  "  I  always  thought 
him  such  a  nice  young  man." 

"  O,  I  don't  mind  a  young  man  sowing  his  wild  oats, 
but  he  shouldn't  betray  his  country  in  doing  it  ..." 

"  We  should  take  care  that  we  don't  give  our  young  men 
too  much  liberty,"  said  Mrs.  Bonegraft  to  Mrs.  Metcalfe 


440  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

in  the  cooling-room  of  a  Turkish  bath.  "  There's  young 
Bernard  Lascelles,  as  nice  a  young  man  as  you  could  wish 
for,  gone  sowing  his  wild  oats  and  disgracing  himself  and 
his  family." 

"  What  has  he  done?  "  asked  Mrs.  Metcalfe. 

"  O,  don't  ask  me.  It's  too  awful  a  story.  German  spies 
and  wicked  woman  and  all  sorts  of  terrible  things  .  .  . 
There's  some  dreadful  woman  he  associates  with  in  Antwerp, 
his  mistress,  I  suppose  ..." 

So  the  story  went  from  mouth  to  mouth,  and,  as  in  the 
whispering  game  that  changes  "  Julius  Caesar  was  stabbed 
by  Brutus  "  to  "  The  cat's  in  the  kitchen,"  it  reached  Mrs. 
Moffat  in  a  very  much  altered  form,  and  a  very  spicy  one, 
too;  and  Mrs.  Moffat  handed  it  on  to  Mrs.  Harvey. 

"My  poor  Mabel!"  said  Mrs.  Harvey,  and  dabbed  a 
handkerchief  to  her  eye.  Her  eyes  were  large  and  luminous 
and  her  lachrymal  glands  were  very  readily  stimulated. 
"  My  poor  Mabel!  "  she  repeated.  "  My  innocent  child." 

But  she  congratulated  herself  on  the  acquisition  of  a 
weapon  for  which  she  had  neither  hoped  nor  sought. 


CHAPTER  XV 

GATHERING   CLOUDS 


*  *  A  S  a  military  expert,"  said  Stephen  to  Hektor  O'Fla- 

-**•  herty,  "  what  did  you  think  of  the  manoeuvres  yes- 
terday ?  " 

O'Flaherty  smiled  reminiscently  and  said : 

"Kind  of  hide-and-seek  stunt,  wasn't  it?  When  it  was 
all  over  the  Green  Field-Marshal  came  up  to  me  and  said: 
'  Well,  umpire,  who's  won  ? '  '  Search  me,'  said  I.  '  If 
I'd  some  vague  notion  what  the  two  armies  were  aiming  at, 
and  a  sort  of  general  idea  where  the  blazes  they'd  all  got  to, 
a  decision  might  be  hazarded.  But  as  it  is  .  .  .  '  He 
didn't  like  that  a  bit,  sir." 

"  He  wouldn't." 

"  I  wonder  what  the  hell  they  thought  they  were  up  to? 
There  were  about  nine  hundred  men  engaged  and  they 
covered  an  area  twice  the  size  of  the  battlefield  of  Waterloo. 
I  guess  either  line  could  have  been  broken  by  a  determined 
billy-goat.  ...  I  was  sorry  for  the  rank  and  file.  They 
seemed  completely  at  sea.  ...  As  for  the  generals,  it  made 
me  laugh  to  hear  them  issue  their  orders.  You'd  have 
thought  they  were  Hindenburgs  directing  army-groups." 

"  Yes.  There's  a  kind  of  megalomania  afflicting  some  of 
our  leaders:  the  intoxicating  effect  of  power,  I  suppose. 
Those  two  generals  of  yesterday  would  think  nothing  now 
of  tackling  the  British  Army  in  the  field." 

"  I  wouldn't  put  it  past  them." 

"  I'm  worried  about  some  of  our  Executive,  that's  a  fact. 
The  old  unanimity  has  been  going  from  us  during  the  last 
few  months,  and  a  party  seems  to  be  segregating  itself  from 


442  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

the  rest  of  us.  This  party  is  made  up  of  the  men  whose 
judgment  and  ability  I've  most  reason  to  distrust:  men 
without  a  sense  of  proportion,  and  some  of  them  mentally 
unbalanced.  .  .  . 

"  Now,  if  you  take  a  movement  like  ours,  a  military,  rev- 
olutionary and  party  secret  organization,  and  put  at  the 
head  of  it  three  or  four  men  who  are  fools  enough  to  think 
it  a  match  for  a  regular  army,  a  couple  of  plotters  who  are 
above  being  frank  with  their  colleagues,  and  an  unhealthy 
fanatic  like  Mallow  who  preaches  a  doctrine  of  blood-sacri- 
fice —  where  do  you  think  you're  heading  to  ?  " 

"  It  looks  bad,"  said  Hektor.  "  But  I  doubt  if  they've 
the  guts  to  do  anything." 

At  this  moment  Felim  O'Dwyer  entered  the  smoking- 
room  wearing  a  look  of  unusual  gravity. 

"  I've  something  important  to  tell  you  fellows,"  he  said. 
"  Let's  go  somewhere  where  we  won't  be  disturbed." 

"  My  bedroom,"  suggested  Stephen,  and  they  adjourned 
there  at  once. 

"  I'll  begin  right  at  the  beginning,"  said  O'Dwyer,  pacing 
up  and  down  the  room,  while  Stephen  sat  on  the  bed  and 
Hektor  on  a  chair.  "  I  met  Austin  Mallow  casually  at 
Headquarters  today,  and  he  asked  me  to  come  out  and 
lunch  with  him.  I  was  rather  surprised  at  this,  because 
we're  not  particularly  friendly,  and  then  I  came  to  the  con- 
clusion he  was  going  to  ask  me  about  the  author  of  that 
poem  of  mine :  A  Vision  in  the  Void  of  Night,  you  know ; 
so  I  began  to  cast  about  for  excuses  for  his  non-appearance. 
However,  Mallow  said  very  little  all  through  the  meal:  it 
was  at  the  Dolphin :  a  good  square  four-course  lunch,  with 
a  bottle  of  Burgundy.  Then  at  the  end,  over  coffee  and 
cigars,  he  looked  me  straight  in  the  face  with  those  piercing 
eyes  of  his  and  said :  '  What  do  you  think  of  the  way  things 
are  going?  '  At  once,  I  remembered  the  interview  he'd  had 
with  you,  Stephen,  so  I  looked  as  stupid  as  I  could  and  said : 
'What  do  you  mean?'  Then  he  began  to  talk  quietly 
about  the  present  policy.  Did  I  think  the  arrangement  to 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  443 

fight  from  our  houses  in  case  of  an  attempt  to  disarm  us  a 
good  one?  Didn't  I  think  we  were  taking  the  arrest  of 
Lascelles,  Umpleby  and  the  others  rather  tamely?  Weren't 
the  men  getting  impatient  of  inaction?  And  so  on.  I  said 
very  little,  but  gave  sympathetic  grunts  from  time  to  time. 
Then  he  began  to  get  more  definite,  and  asked  me  whether 
we  were  likely  to  get  a  better  chance  of  striking  than  the 
present.  I  became  duller  still,  and  he  became  so  exasperated 
that  he  gave  away  far  more  than  he  intended.  I  got  nothing 
consecutive  out  of  him,  but  by  piecing  things  together  I  de- 
duce this  in  brief :  that  there's  a  party  on  the  Executive  who 
mean  to  strike  a  blow  as  soon  as  possible;  that  they're  in 
alliance  with  the  Liberty  Hall  crowd ;  and  that  the  date  is 
to  be  about  Christmas." 

"  By  gad,   Stephen,  you  had  sound  dope,"  said   Hektor. 

"  Wait  though,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  When  I'd  got  as 
much  as  I  wanted  out  of  him,  I  told  him  I  didn't  approve 
of  an  insurrection,  and  that  I  was  sure  the  majority  of  the 
Volunteers  were  the  same.  '  You're  wrong  there,'  says  he, 
'  for  I'm  in  a  position  to  know.  I  must  insist,  however,  that 
you  regard  all  I've  said  to  you  as  strictly  confidential,'  which 
was  rather  like  tightening  the  strings  after  you'd  let  the  cat 
out  of  the  bag.  So  I've  come  straight  over  here,  and  that's 
that." 

He  took  a  chair  and  lit  a  cigarette. 

"  This  is  serious,"  said  Hektor.  "  Gad,  they  must  be 
bigger  fools  than  I  thought  them.  An  insurrection  in  mid- 
winter! Why,  the  weather  would  be  enough  to  quell  it. 
The  English  needn't  fire  a  shot." 

"  This  has  got  to  be  stopped,"  said  Stephen.  "  I'll  see  the 
sane  members  of  the  Executive  after  the  meeting  this  eve- 
ning and  tell  them  your  story,  O'Dwyer." 

"  The  Insurgent  Chieftains  will  probably  try  and  capture 
the  Executive  at  the  elections  next  week,"  remarked  Hektor. 

"  I  should  say,  certainly,"  replied  Stephen.  "  They 
wouldn't  stick  at  a  coup,  but  they'd  like  the  sanction  of 
majority  rule  if  they  could  get  it.  ...  We  must  put  up  a 


444  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

ticket  of  sane  men  and  canvass  the  country  before  the  Con- 
vention meets.  The  organizers  will  make  good  canvassers 
and  any  I  know  are  our  way  of  thinking." 

"  I'll  be  on  the  country  myself,  next  week,"  said  O'Dwyer. 
"  I've  taken  on  Lascelles'  district." 

"Good,"  said  Stephen.  "The  question  now  is:  who 
shall  we  put  on  the  ticket?  There  are  —  let's  see:  yes  — 
six  safe  men  on  the  Executive  already.  We'll  put  them  up 
again  and  add  three  others.  Plump  for  those  and  we  get  a 
clear  majority.  .  .  .  Would  you  stand,  O'Flaherty?  " 

"  I  don't  mind,"  said  Hektor. 

"  And  you,  O'Dwyer?  " 

"  I'd  find  it  easier  canvassing  for  a  ticket  I  wasn't  on," 
said  O'Dwyer. 

"  Well,  the  whole  crowd  will  have  to  be  consulted  any- 
how." He  looked  at  his  watch,  and  said:  "-Five  o'clock. 
I  must  be  off  to  Headquarters." 


Bernard  made  no  attempt  to  take  his  imprisonment  philo- 
sophically. He  chafed  and  fretted  at  his  confinement, 
found  the  solitude  intolerable,  and  could  not  stomach  the 
food.  Moreover,  he  was  not,  like  those  born  to  National- 
ism, inured  to  English  injustice:  he  could  not  take  it  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  he  lashed  himself  into  fury  by  think- 
ing of  it. 

When  the  cell  door  first  slammed  behind  him  he  stood  for 
a  moment  surveying  the  narrow  space  in  which  for  the  next 
four  months  he  was  to  spend  twenty-three  hours  out  of  every 
twenty-four.  The  cold  bare  walls  and  floor,  the  small 
barred  window,  the  plank  bed,  made  a  harsh  and  chilly  pros- 
pect. Suddenly,  his  eye  fell  on  a  book  lying  on  a  shelf  near 
the  door.  He  hastened  to  pick  it  up,  found  that  it  was  a 
Bible,  and  threw  it  down  again.  A  fit  of  fierce  impatience 
seized  him,  and  he  began  striding  about  the  cell,  striking  his 
heels  on  the  floor,  head  bent  and  hands  in  pockets. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  445 

By-and-by  supper  was  brought  to  him,  consisting  of  the 
usual  milkless,  sugarless  cocoa  and  sour  bread,  but  he  could 
not  bring  himself  to  touch  it  and  went  hungry  to  bed.  To 
bed,  but  not  to  sleep,  for  the  hardness  of  the  plank,  the  pangs 
of  hunger,  and  the  searching  cold  of  the  November  night, 
combined  to  keep  him  awake  interminable  hours.  Blessed 
oblivion  came  to  him  shortly  before  morning,  to  be  rudely 
broken  into  ere  it  had  begun  to  refresh  him,  and  he  rose 
and  dressed  himself,  eyelids  heavily  drooping  and  teeth  chat- 
tering the  while,  in  the  bleak  light  of  a  winter's  dawn. 
They  brought  him  skilly  for  breakfast  and  hunger  drove  him 
to  swallow  the  unappetizing  mess,  but  he  could  not  retain 
it.  Sick  and  miserable,  he  sat  for  two  hours  with  his  head 
in  his  hands  until  he  was  cramped  and  numb  with  the  cold. 
Then  he  was  taken  out  to  the  exercise-yard  and  along  with  a 
score  of  other  poor  creatures  set  to  chopping  wood.  Um- 
pleby,  from  a  far  corner  of  the  yard,  grinned  sympathy  to 
him,  and  was  roughly  spoken  to  by  the  warder  in  conse- 
quence. Shivering  with  cold,  Bernard  chopped  and  chopped, 
which  warmed  him  somewhat  though  it  sorely  blistered  his 
hands.  Then  farewell  to  the  sky  and  back  to  the  cell  again. 
.  .  .  The  librarian,  going  his  rounds,  tossed  a  book  on  his 
table.  It  was  a  Third  School  Reader  and  Bernard  flung  it 
from  him  in  disgust. 

He  fell  to  thinking  of  Mabel  and  realized  that  for  a  day 
and  a  night  she  had  scarcely  entered  his  thoughts. 

"  Dear  little  girl,  what  made  me  forget  her?  Is  she 
thinking  of  me  now?  Is  she  working,  I  wonder?  No. 
She's  gone  out  to  her  lunch:  a  bun  and  a  glass  of  milk  at 
the  D.B.C.  What  would  she  think  if  she  knew  I'd  for- 
gotten her?  ...  It  was  too  cold  to  think.  .  .  .  Lord,  I'm 
hungry.  What  would  I  like  now?  Mutton  cutlets  and 
potato  chips,  crisp  and  brown  and  piping  hot.  And  a  glass 
of  foaming  beer.  .  .  .  Damn  it,  I  am  hungry." 

Dinner  came:  soup  and  potatoes.  He  drank  a  little  of 
the  greasy  slop  and  dissected  out  the  healthy  part  of  a  worm- 
bored  potato.  It  served  but  to  whet  his  appetite.  He  de- 


446  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

voured  the  second  potato  ravenously,  skin,  worm-holes, 
and  all. 

"Are  there  no  better  books  in  the  prison  than  this?" 
he  asked  a  warder,  holding  up  the  School  Reader. 

The  warder  took  pity  on  him ;  said  it  was  hard  on  '  the 
likes  of  him  '  to  be  in  a  place  like  that;  and  gave  him  Daniel 
Deronda,  which  had  been  rejected  by  the  burglar  in  the 
neighbouring  cell  .  .  . 

The  days  went  by  ever  so  slowly.  Bernard  had  none  of 
Stephen's  stoicism,  and  patience  was  not  in  him.  More- 
over, he  was  in  love.  So  he  fretted  and  fumed  and  could 
not  even  settle  down  to  the  enjoyment  of  George  Eliot's 
masterpiece.  He  would  pace  his  cell  backwards  and  for- 
wards for  hours  on  end,  or  he  would  sit  still  lost  in  dreams 
of  food,  or  Mabel.  Sometimes  a  bar  of  sunlight  would 
shine  through  his  window  on  to  the  opposite  wall  and  he 
would  stare  at  it  gloomily,  fancying  that  it  mocked  his 
helplessness. 

Mass  brought  him  no  consolation.  Though  he  had  that 
deep-rooted,  sub-conscious  faith  that  no  Catholic  was  ever 
without  and  which  recalls  nearly  even'  wanderer  in  the  end, 
he  had  none  of  Stephen's  intellectual  convictions  in  religion. 
His  intellect,  in  fact,  nearly  always  led  him  away  from  it, 
and  it  was  his  emotions  that  invariably  brought  him  back. 
In  his  adolescence  it  was  the  need  of  supernatural  help  in 
a  crisis  that  had  revived  his  lost  faith,  and  the  crisis  over 
he  had  relapsed  later  on  to  unbelief.  Then  the  magnificent 
music  of  one  of  Bach's  Masses  on  a  Christmas  Day  had  re- 
called him  again,  to  fall  away  once  more  after  an  argument 
over  the  question  of  eternal  punishment.  Thus,  he  had 
wavered  all  his  life.  The  sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  therefore, 
had  little  inspiration  for  him  when  shorn  of  pomp  and  music, 
and  the  effect  of  the  little  ceremony  in  the  bare  gloomy 
prison  chapel  was,  if  anything,  depressing.  He  found  it 
difficult  even  to  pray  .  .  . 

Poor  Bernard  was  fond  of  the  good  things  of  life  and  he 
was  accustomed  to  getting  them,  too.  For  all  his  hunger 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  447 

he  could  not  stomach  skilly,  and  the  prison  bread  gave  him 
indigestion.  Day  by  day  he  grew  thinner  and  weaker. 
He  came  soon  to  think  of  nothing  else  but  food  and  to  dream 
of  it  when  he  slept.  The  common  empyreumatic  dishes 
conjured  themselves  up  tantalizing  before  his  vision.  In  his 
imagination  he  saw  the  rich  brown  of  grills,  heard  the  siz- 
zling of  f  ryingpans,  smelt  the  savour  of  rashers.  He  would 
dream  of  feasts,  and  always  some  of  the  guests  would  be 
late,  so  that  he  would  have  to  wait,  hungrily  eyeing  the  vic- 
tuals. Then  the  late  ones  would  arrive;  he  would  draw  out 
his  chair  to  sit  down ;  and  in  that  instant  he  would  awake. 

Naturally  of  a  nervous  temperament,  ill  nourishment 
made  him  nervy.  A  horror  of  loneliness  and  confinement 
came  upon  him :  a  revival  of  the  horror  he  had  once  endured 
as  a  small  boy  when  a  nurse  had  shut  him  up  in  a  linen- 
press  as  a  punishment  for  some  naughtiness  or  other.  A 
hysterical  fear  that  he  might  be  forgotten  and  left  in  his 
prison  for  ever  took  possession  of  him.  He  imagined  him- 
self caught  here  like  a  rat  in  a  trap  when  the  prison  might 
be  on  fire  above.  He  felt  forsaken  by  all  the  world  .  .  . 

After  a  seeming  eternity  he  realized  that  only  ten  days  had 
passed  —  a  twelfth  part  of  his  sentence. 

"  All  that  I've  been  through  already  over  again,"  he 
groaned,  "  and  again  and  again  eleven  times !  " 

Weeks  went  by,  and  the  time  came  for  Mabel's  first  letter 
to  arrive.  In  the  back  of  his  Bible  was  the  scoring  made 
by  some  poor  wretch  of  the  days  of  his  captivity  (two  years 
he  had  had)  and  Bernard  used  it  at  second  hand  to  count 
the  days  up  to  the  arrival  of  his  letter.  It  came  at  last,  a 
short  and  colourless  note,  and  a  day  late  at  that. 

Dear  Bernard, 

I  hope  you  are  quite  well  and  not  too  lonely.  It  must  be 
dreadful  to  be  locked  up  in  a  cell  this  cold  weather  .  .  . 

So  it  began,  and  after  a  few  items  of  not  very  interesting 
news  it  wound  up,  without  any  expressions  of  affection,  with 
her  initials. 


448  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Bernard  was  disappointed  and  puzzled  and  then  hit  upon 
an  explanation. 

"  Silly  little  dear,"  he  said,  "  she  was  shy  of  the  governor 
seeing  what  she'd  write." 

He  wrote  her  a  love  letter,  cramming  all  his  feelings  and 
a  thousand  endearments  by  writing  microscopically  into  the 
official  sheet  of  notepaper.  At  the  end  he  wrote:  "  Don't  be 
shy  of  the  governor.  He's  only  a  machine." 

Christmas  Eve  came,  and  he  remembered  the  last  one  so 
happily  spent  with  Mabel.  In  his  imagination  he  saw  the 
glittering  shop  windows  and  the  jostling  crowds  in  Graf  ton 
Street,  and  heard  the  tinkling  of  tea-cups. 


3 

Felim  O'Dwyer  sat  idly  poking  the  fire  in  the  bed-sitting- 
room  which  he  inhabited  in  a  little  house  on  the  South 
Circular  Road.  By  daylight  it  was  a  horrible  enough  apart- 
ment, with  its  dingy  yellow  wall-paper,  its  faded  thread-bare 
carpet;  its  blackened  ceiling;  with  its  enormous  battered 
double  bed,  its  rickety  wash-stand,  and  tawdry  dust-soaked 
mantel-hangings ;  and  with  its  grimy  window  looking  out  on 
a  dreary  yard  and  the  back  of  another  house.  But  at  night, 
with  the  blind  drawn  and  the  lamp  lit,  it  looked  cosy  enough, 
and  O'Dwyer  had  added  to  the  furniture  a  couple  of  wicker 
arm-chairs  and  a  book  case,  and  had  covered  the  table  with  a 
red  baize  cloth.  His  means  being  small,  he  was  obliged  to 
live  modestly  in  order  to  afford  a  consulting  room  in  Mer- 
rion  Street. 

He  ceased  toying  with  the  poker  and  took  a  little  note- 
book from  one  of  his  pockets  and  a  pencil  from  another.  He 
chewed  at  the  latter  for  about  a  minute  and  then  scribbled 
the  following  lines: 

It's  very  true,  dear,  that  eyes  of  blue,  dear, 
And  brown  eyes  too,  dear,  have  charmed  ray  sight. 
But  your  eyes  of  grey,  dear,  my  heart  have  made,  dear, 
Very  much  afraid,  dear,  that  it's  killed  outright. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  449 

He  paused  here  and  muttered: 

"  Now  if  I  go  on  with  that  I'll  probably  spoil  it  and  make 
it  comic." 

He  read  the  verse  over  to  himself  with  approval. 

"  It  would  fit  on  a  post-card,"  he  said. 

He  read  it  again. 

"  What  an  ass  I  am,"  he  said. 

Felim  O'Dwyer  was  in  love  .  .  . 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  hall-door  and  some  one  was 
admitted.  Then  the  handle  of  his  own  door  was  turned. 
Swiftly,  he  pocketed  his  note-book  as  Hektor  O'Flaherty 
and  Hugo  McGurk  entered. 

"  Hello,  boys!  Come  right  in."  O'Dwyer  poked  up  the 
fire  to  a  blaze  and  produced  cigarettes.  "  What  are  you 
doing  in  town,  Hugo  ?  " 

"  Working  for  my  final,"  said  McGurk. 

"  Lazy  devil !     I  heard  you'd  got  stuck  again  in  Autumn." 

"  Arrah,  what  harm?     Sure,  I'm  young  yet," 

"  How  are  things  in  your  part  of  the  country,  by  the 
way?  " 

"  Looking  up  a  bit.  They've  only  got  two  recruits  for 
the  Army  in  the  last  three  months,  and  they  corner-boys 
that  enlisted  when  they  were  drunk.  There  was  a  recruit- 
ing meeting  hissed  only  the  other  day.  McGovern,  the  local 
gombeen-man,  was  speaking:  small  nationalities,  Catholic 
Belgium,  and  all  the  rest  of  it:  fierce  raimeis.  'What 
would  the  Germans  do  if  they  came  to  Ballylennon  ? '  says 
he.  '  They'd  take  the  land  off  ye,'  says  he.  '  They'd  batten 
on  your  flesh  and  blood,'  says  he.  Then  a  fellow  in  the 
crowd  calls  out:  '  Sure,  ye  wouldn't  let  'em  threspass  on 
\our  presairves,  McGovern.'  You  shduld  have  seen  Mc- 
Govern's  face  at  that:  it  was  a  treat.  He  couldn't  get 
another  word  in  for  the  racket." 

"  The  country's  coming  to  its  senses  at  last,"  said  Hektor. 

"How  are  things  going  on  the  new  Executive?"  asked 
O'Dwyer. 

"  That  Executive,"  said  Hektor,  "  gives  one  furiously  to 


450  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

think,  as  the  French  say.  The  party  with  sound  dope  has 
the  majority  but  the  other  crowd  don't  seem  to  mind.  I'm 
sure  there's  things  going  on  behind  the  scenes,  and  I  don't 
like  it.  No,  sir.  As  you  know,  we  faced  them  right  at  the 
beginning  with  the  question  of  fight  or  no  fight.  McNeill 
put  the  thing  to  us  fair  and  square  in  a  statement  that  just 
put  the  whole  case  against  insurrection  in  a  nutshell.  I 
watched  the  faces  of  the  unsound  dopers  during  the  reading, 
and  what  did  I  see  there?  Conviction?  Not  on  your  life. 
Sheer  downright  obstinacy.  There  was  a  sneer  on  Mallow's 
face  that  I  could  have  booted  him  for,  and  Barret  was  posing 
for  a  bust  of  Robert  Emmet.  When  the  statement  was 
over  the  dopers  got  up  each  in  turn  and  heartily  endorsed 
every  word  of  it.  What  more  could  be  said?  And  yet  it's 
as  plain  as  a  pikestaff  that  their  minds  are  made  up,  and  I'm 
as  sure  as  death  that  they're  working  underground." 

"  I'll  tell  you  a  little  tale,"  said  McGurk,  "  that'll  tack 
on  to  that.  The  other  day  I  dropped  in  at  Rathgar  Road 
to  have  a  crack  with  Brian  Mallow.  He  didn't  seem  extra 
pleased  to  see  me,  and  he  took  me  up  to  Austin's  study  at 
the  top  of  the  house  instead  of  the  sitting-room.  I  was 
surprised,  of  course,  but  I  said  nothing.  Anyhow,  we 
smoked  and  talked  for  a  while  —  a  couple  of  hours,  maybe 
—  when  brother  Austin  sticks  his  head  in  at  the  door  and  tells 
Brian  he  wants  him  for  a  few  minutes.  Brian  goes  out, 
calling  on  me  to  wait  a  bit  and  he'd  be  back.  Well,  I 
waited  for  maybe  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  then  I  remembered 
I'd  an  appointment  that  I'd  be  late  for  if  I  didn't  go  at  once. 
I  got  up  and  went  downstairs,  and  then  I  thought  I'd  look 
into  the  sitting-room  and  tell  Brian  I  was  off,  if  he  was  there. 
Well,  I  opened  the  door,  and  what  do  you  think  I  saw?  A 
meeting  of  anarchists  it  looked  like.  There  was  me  bould 
Austin  sitting  at  one  end  of  the  table  looking  as  cute  as  a 
leprechaun:  you  know  the  eyes  of  him:  and  P.H.P.  and 
Plunkett  and  all  the  rest  of  the  dope  crowd  sitting  in  con- 
clave. I  tell  you,  Hektor,  I  got  a  look  from  the  pote  that 
fairly  froze  me  blood,  so  I  just  banged  that  door  and  buzzed 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  451 

off.  .  .  .  Now,  sirree,  what  do  you  think  of  that  adven- 
ture ?  " 

"  Hm.     It  looks  bad,  sonny." 

"  Damn  it,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  it's  clear  as  daylight  what 
they're  up  to;  only  what  have  we  to  go  on?  What  can  we 
do?  If  we  faced  them  with  it  they'd  only  give  renewed 
assurances,  I  suppose." 

"  Exactly,"  said  Hektor.  "  They're  answered  our  sus- 
picions twice  that  way  already." 

"  Confound  it,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  These  fellows  call 
themselves  democrats.  What  do  they  think  elections  are 
for  if  they  disregard  their  verdict?  What  would  they  say 
if  we  were  the  minority  and  tried  to  stick  them  in  the  back?  " 

"  They  used  to  talk  about  the  corruption  of  the  U.I.L.," 
said  McGurk,  "  and  the  way  the  Hibs.  rig  elections,  but 
sure  these  fellows  out-do  them  altogether.  And  whatever 
you  may  say  about  the  U.I.L.,  they  never  gambled  with 
men's  lives." 

"  It's  an  absolute  betrayal  of  the  men,"  said  Hektor. 
"  We've  taught  them  discipline  for  their  own  undoing." 

"  But  what  can  we  do?  "  exclaimed  O'Dwyer. 

"  We  ought  to  recall  the  Convention,"  said  Hektor,  "  and 
put  the  case  to  them  fair  and  square.  I  know  what  that 
would  mean.  The  delegates  are  a  sensible  crowd,  and  even 
those  who  didn't  vote  for  our  ticket  don't  want  any  insur- 
rection dope.  The  lunacy  of  the  movement,  I'm  glad  to 
say,  is  confined  to  the  Executive." 

"  Is  that  going  to  be  done?  " 

"  I'm  afraid  not.  I  put  it  up  to  our  crowd,  but  they 
didn't  think  it  would  work  —  not  yet,  anyway.  You  see 
we've  nothing  but  guess-work  and  suspicion  to  go  on  and  the 
doper's  assurances  will  be  accepted  without  question." 

"  And  meanwhile?  " 

"  Meanwhile,"  said  Hektor,  "  we  must  keep  our  eyes  and 
ears  wider  open  than  ever." 


452  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

4 

A  worried  Chancellor  of  the  British  Exchequer,  faced 
with  a  war-bill  of  some  five  million  pounds  a  day,  cast  his 
eye  round  for  economies  which  would  help  him  to  make 
ends  meet  and  laid  covetous  hands  upon  the  grant  for  the 
teaching  of  the  Irish  language  in  the  schools  of  Ireland, 
thereby  securing  the  continuance  of  the  war  for  some  ten  or 
eleven  minutes.  The  Party  deputed  to  look  after  Ireland's 
interests  in  the  Imperial  Parliament  took  the  robbery  with- 
out a  whine,  whereupon  the  Volunteers  took  the  matter  up, 
convened  a  public  meeting  of  protest  in  Dublin,  and  stepped 
out  of  the  seclusion  into  which  they  had  seemingly  lapsed  for 
more  than  a  year.  The  Volunteers  themselves  were  a  little 
surprised  at  the  size  and  tone  of  the  audience  which  mus- 
tered at  their  call.  The  Round  Room  of  the  Mansion 
House  was  packed  to  the  doors;  the  Parliamentarian  speak- 
ers were  treated  as  men  of  no  account,  while  the  Volunteers 
were  heartily  cheered;  and  references  to  the  Bill  on  the 
Statute  Book,  Small  Nations,  and  the  Sanctity  of  Treaties, 
were. invariably  greeted  with  sarcastic  laughter. 

"  Sure,  the  bloody  ould  Empire's  bust  anyhow,"  shouted 
an  interrupter  in  the  middle  of  one  speech. 

"  Begob!  "  said  McGurk  to  O'Dwyer,  "  we're  out  of  the 
wilderness  at  last." 

But  it  was  the  Conscription  question  that  really  re- 
established the  Volunteers  as  a  force  in  Irish  politics.  While 
the  Party  hesitated  as  to  a  course  of  action  the  people  of 
Dublin  were  once  more  summoned  to  the  Mansion  House. 
The  numbers  of  the  previous  meeting  were  doubled:  a  sec- 
ond room  had  to  be  requisitioned,  and  even  that  was  in- 
adequate. There  was  no  superfluous  reasoning  or  argu- 
ment in  the  speeches:  simply  a  reiteration  of  the  plain  state- 
ment that  Irishmen  did  not  recognize  the  right  of  the  British 
Parliament  to  conscript  them,  and  the  straightforward  un- 
mistakable resolution  carried  by  acclamation:  "  We  will  not 
have  Conscription."  In  their  effort  to  serve  two  masters  the 
Party  leaders  at  Westminster  made  a  woeful  spectacle  of 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  453 

themselves:  they  professed  to  regard  the  whole  question  as 
one  of  expediency,  not  of  principle,  and  protested  that  Ire- 
land was  ready  to  accept  the  measure  if  it  were  proved 
necessary  to  the  winning  of  the  war  —  which  nobody,  not 
even  themselves,  believed.  Their  attempt  to  get  the  credit 
for  the  defeat  of  the  measure  failed  lamentably,  for  the  Irish 
people  had  once  more  come  to  realize  that  unyielding  patriot- 
ism is  a  more  potent  argument  with  England  than  fine  spun 
reasoning  and  to  regard  the  Irish  Volunteers  as  the  saviours 
of  the  nation. 

"  We've  turned  the  corner  now,"  said  Stephen  to  Hektor. 
"  It's  only  a  question  of  time  before  the  whole  people  comes 
over  to  us." 

"  If  only  our  own  crowd  would  keep  their  heads,"  mut- 
tered Hektor. 

The  season  of  Spring  must  have  an  enlivening  effect 
upon  the  minds  of  men.  The  Spring  of  1915  had  seen 
public  opinion  begin  to  veer  round  in  favour  of  the  Volun- 
teers: by  the  Spring  of  1916  a  widespread  feeling  of  respect 
was  gradually  expanding  into  unqualified  approval.  They 
were  still  a  minority;  still  even  a  small  minority;  but  they 
were  no  longer  an  insignificant  minority.  And  their  in- 
fluence was  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  numbers,  for  they 
were  vigorous,  earnest,  honest,  intelligent,  and  fearless,  and, 
to  all  appearance,  unanimous.  Neutrals  openly  professed 
admiration  for  them,  and  many  supporters  of  the  Party 
looked  on  them  with  favour. 

They  seized  an  early  opportunity  of  testing  the  popular 
sentiment.  Fresh  public  meetings  were  held  to  protest 
against  the  persecution  of  Bernard,  Umpleby,  and  the  other 
organizers,  and  roars  of  approval  greeted  the  announcement 
that  for  every  organizer  arrested  two  more  had  been  sent  on 
the  road. 

"  So  the  more  they  arrest,"  said  the  speaker,  "  the  more 
they'll  have  to  arrest.  .  .  .  Now  who  stands  for  Ireland? 
Who  tells  England  that  her  gaols  have  never  stifled  the  soul 
of  Ireland  and  never  will?  " 


454  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

The  popular  imagination  was  caught,  for,  though  the  old 
traditions  of  nationalism  had  lapsed,  they  had  not  died. 
Scores  of  young  men  rushed  to  enrol  themselves  in  the 
Volunteers. 

St.  Patrick's  Day  gave  an  opportunity  for  an  organized 
display  of  strength.  A  review  and  march-past  of  the  Dublin 
Regiment  were  held  in  College  Green  at  mid-day,  all  traffic 
being  forcibly  suspended  for  the  occasion.  On  the  very 
spot  where  the  Volunteers  who  had  won  the  independent 
Parliament  in  1782  had  held  their  famous  review  the  build- 
ing that  had  housed  that  Parliament  looked  down  upon  their 
descendants  marshalled  in  the  same  cause.  The  spectacle 
of  this  well-armed,  disciplined,  green-uniformed  army  was 
one  to  appeal  to  the  heart  of  the  populace.  Here  was  an 
Irish  army:  an  army  pledged  to  fight  for  Ireland  alone  and 
owning  no  allegiance  but  to  Ireland ;  an  army  that  had 
drilled  and  armed  in  face  of  discouragement  and  persecution ; 
an  army  that  had  flung  the  gauntlet  in  the  face  of  the  heredi- 
tary foe  by  announcing  that  any  attempt  to  disarm  it  would 
be  resisted  to  the  death.  A  gallant  army  and  a  gay  army: 
these  men  had  seen  through  the  lies  that  had  deceived  the 
rest  of  the  nation  for  so  long;  they  had  used  the  enemy's 
catchwords  as  a  gibe  against  them;  they  had  turned  Eng- 
land's war  aims  into  a  joke;  their  witticisms  were  on  every 
lip;  they  took  the  enemy's  persecution  with  a  laugh  and 
went  to  gaol  jesting.  And  deep  down  in  every  heart  was  a 
feeling  that  since  they  were  persecuted  they  must  be  in  the 
right. 

"  The  man  in  the  gap!  "  shouted  a  spectator  as  Eoin  Mac- 
Neill  passed  along  the  lines,  and  the  epithet  was  enthusi- 
astically applauded. 

A  war-office  motor-car  attempted  to  pass  through  the 
cordon  during  the  course  of  the  review.  McGurk,  who 
was  in  command  of  this  particular  section,  stepped  in  front 
of  it. 

"  Go  back,"  he  said.     "  You're  violating  Irish  neutrality." 

A  choleric  Colonel  in   the  back  of   the  car  angrily  de- 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  455 

manded  a  passage,  saying  he  was  engaged  on  work  of  na- 
tional importance. 

"  Show  me  your  passport  signed  by  Eoin  MacNeill,"  said 
McGurk. 

The  Colonel  ordered  the  chauffeur  to  proceed,  but  Mc- 
Gurk levelled  a  rifle  at  him,  whereupon  the  Colonel  cursed 
his  impudence  roundly,  but  deemed  it  prudent  to  retreat. 

"  Some  demonstration  of  power,"  remarked  Hektor,  who 
had  witnessed  the  scene,  to  Stephen. 

"  If  we  can  only  keep  our  lunatics  in  control,"  said 
Stephen,  "we'll  have  all  Ireland  with  us  in  six  months." 

5 

Bernard's  second  month  in  gaol  dragged  itself  slowly  by. 
Once  more  he  counted  the  day  till  the  arrival  of  Mabel's 
letter.  Once  more  it  was  a  day  late:  two  days:  three. 
Then  came  a  note  briefer  and  colder  than  the  previous 
one. 

"  So  much  for  women's  promises,"  said  Bernard  and  wrote 
to  her  in  similar  vein,  though  not  so  briefly. 

"What  on  earth  is  she  up  to?"  he  asked  himself. 
"  Wish  I'd  insisted  on  her  taking  the  visits."  The  visiting 
time  being  in  the  midst  of  her  working  hours  it  had  been 
arranged  that  his  monthly  letter  should  be  from  her  and 
his  visit  from  his  mother. 

The  latter  came  punctual  to  the  hour  and  babbled  news 
to  him.  Sandy  was  home  from  the  Dardanelles,  poor  boy, 
crippled  for  life.  He  had  been  buried  by  a  high  explosive 
shell  and  his  legs  had  been  so  crushed  that  they  had  to  be 
amputated,  one  at  the  knee,  the  other  at  the  hip.  They 
had  not  heard  from  Eugene  for  a  week.  Alice  had  become 
a  V.A.D.  Sir  Eugene  had  burnt  every  photograph  of  Ber- 
nard that  he  could  lay  his  hands  on.  She  crammed  an 
astonishing  amount  of  information  into  the  allotted  quarter 
of  an  hour. 

So  his  second  month  ended  and  a  third  stretched  itself 
before  him. 


456  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Bernard  was  by  nature  a  propagandist.  Any  view  that 
he  held  strongly  he  always  wished  to  put  before  every  one 
he  met  in  an  enthusiastic  desire  to  convert  them.  In  this 
he  differed  from  Stephen  who  thought  only  of  conversion 
in  mass  and  would  not  waste  time  on  individuals,  and  from 
O'Dwyer,  who  hated  his  opponents  too  much  to  wish  to  con- 
vert them.  Alone  in  his  cell  now  Bernard  held  imaginary 
controversies  with  all  his  enemies  in  turn.  He  tackled  the 
Redmondites: 

"  According  to  your  present  theory,  Sir  Edward  Carson 
is  a  more  patriotic  Irishman  than  Eoin  MacNeill;  George 
Gunby  Rourke  and  Fred  Heuston  Harrington  are  true  men, 
and  Stephen  and  I  are  traitors.  .  .  .  But  you  wouldn't  dare 
follow  your  idea  to  its  logical  conclusion  or  you'd  have  to 
drop  it  at  once." 

No  answer. 

"  What  could  they  answer  without  stultifying  them- 
selves ?  .  .  .  Well,  why  not  practise  humility  and  do  stultify 
yourselves?  " 

Again  no  answer. 

He  tackled  the  Unionists: 

"  You  do  a  lot  of  spouting  now  about  the  honour  and 
glory  of  Ireland.  You  presume  to  call  yourselves  Irish 
patriots,  and  yet  you  call  me  a  traitor  because  I  hold  dif- 
ferent views  from  yours  as  to  what's  good  for  Ireland.  Go 
on.  Stick  to  your  old  attitude,  the  attitude  of  England's 
garrison  and  you  will  at  any  rate  be  honest  and  consistent. 
.  .  .  Ireland's  War,  indeed!  You'd  goad  her  into  it  even 
if  it  wasn't." 

He  tackled  the  "  Intellectuals,"  as  typified  in  Mrs.  Heus- 
ton Harrington : 

"  You  claim  to  be  intelligent  and  yet  you  believe  that  this 
war  is  being  fought  for  a  principle.  You  claim  to  be  broad- 
minded  and  yet  you  never  read  our  side  of  the  controversy. 
You  call  us  narrowminded  though  we  read  far  more  of  your 
propaganda  than  our  own.  You  claim  to  be  a  thinker,  and 
yet  you  find  your  level  in  the  leading  articles  of  the  Irish 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  457 

Times.  .  .  .  You  call  the  Catholic  Church  the  enemy  of 
freedom;  you  call  her  persecution  of  heretics  an  attack  on 
freedom  of  thought  and  her  index  an  attack  on  freedom  of 
speech  and  writing.  Yet  you  support  the  British  Govern- 
ment in  its  persecution  of  Irishmen,  its  censorship  of  their 
papers  and  its  prohibitions  of  their  meetings? 

!< '  Ah,  that's  different,'  I  hear  you  say.     Fool! 

"  You  think  it  tame  and  cowardly  of  me  to  take  the  word 
of  the  Church  for  the  truths  of  religion,  yet  you'd  have  me 
take  the  word  of  English  politicians  for  the  truth  of  the 
war.  You  scorn  me  for  submitting  to  the  laws  of  the 
Church,  yet  you'd  have  me  submit  to  conscription  by  the 
English  Parliament.  .  .  .  Freedom,  madam!  You  don't 
know  the  meaning  of  the  word." 

He  tackled  the  Academic  neutrals: 

"  Bloodless  bookworms !  "  he  cried.  "  Shake  off  your  dust 
and  live.  Why  leave  doing  to  fools?  You'd  rather  make 
nothing  than  make  a  mistake.  Your  greatest  fear  is  the  fear 
of  looking  ridiculous.  Damn  your  dusty  smugness!  Better 
make  fools  of  yourselves  by  doing  things  than  be  fooled  by 
doing  nothing. 

"What  would  they  answer  to  that,  I  wonder?  Relight 
their  pipes  and  go  on  reading,  I  suppose." 

The  fever  of  argument  left  him  and  he  became  reflective. 

"What  fools  men  are!  How  readily  they  are  deceived. 
Here  are  the  common  men  of  the  world  slaughtering  each 
other  at  the  bidding  of  the  few  they  know  to  be  their  com- 
mon enemy.  Here  are  common  men  at  the  same  bidding 
locking  up  me  who  am  their  friend.  A  world  of  idiots! 
Will  it  ever  be  sane? 

"  If  I  could  only  reach  to  the  minds  of  the  people  then 
the  walls  of  my  prison  would  be  torn  down  in  an  hour. 
Would  they?  Bah!  I  doubt  if  they'd  listen  to  me.  .  .  . 
Education  .  .  . 

"  I'm  in  a  prison  within  a  prison.  Ireland  is  a  prison, 
and  we  poor  captives  stretch  out  our  hands  vainly  to  our 
fellow-men.  If  they  only  knew,  if  we  could  only  reach  their 


458  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

minds.  .  .  .  But  we  can't  .  .  .  The  people  as  yet  know 
neither  how  to  talk  nor  how  to  listen  .  .  . 

"  When  is  the  universal  Revolution  coming?  Will 
France  lead  it?  ...  Or  Russia?  .  .  .  Why  not  Ireland? 
We  are  the  only  people  who  ever  rose  for  an  idea.  It  took 
hunger  to  make  even  France  rise.  .  .  .  But  we're  too  small. 
Who'd  follow  us?  Snobbishness  still  rules  the  world.  .  .  . 
Men !  What  dear  stupid  fools  you  are ! 

"  One  thing  is  certain.  The  present  system  is  smashing 
itself.  It  cannot  last  for  ever:  it  cannot  last  our  time.  .  .  . 
Will  it  smash  the  world  in  the  process?  Or  will  the  people 
arise  from  the  wreckage  ?  " 

Chaotically  questions  and  ideas  fermented  in  his  half- 
starved  brain.  They  wore  him  out,  and  yet  he  could  not 
sleep. 

And  ever  and  again  he  would  return  to  wondering  at 
Mabel's  reticence.  It  could  not  possibly  be  due  to  mere 
shyness,  he  told  himself.  Could  she  have  ceased  to  care? 
He  refused  to  contemplate  the  thought.  Her  tears  at  leav- 
ing him,  the  warmth  of  her  last  kiss  forbade  it.  But  why? 
Why?  Why?  He  had  so  looked  forward  to  those  letters. 
He  had  hoped  for  some  of  her  little  jokes,  for  endearments 
that  he  could  have  read  over  and  over  again,  so  sweetening 
many  a  weary  hour.  Was  she  destitute  of  imagination  that 
she  could  not  think  of  this?  Did  it  not  occur  to  her  that 
her  letters  would  be  his  only  gleam  of  sunshine?  And  oh, 
the  coldness  of  those  brief  notes  of  hers,  too  disappointing 
to  bear  a  second  reading.  Why?  Why?  Why? 

She  had  become  a  part  of  himself  and  separation  was 
gradually  getting  unbearable.  He  ached  for  the  sight  of  her, 
hungered  to  touch  her;  and  in  a  fever  of  longing  the  third 
month  went  by.  His  desire  mounted  higher  and  higher  as 
the  day  for  the  next  letter  approached.  It  brought  nothing. 
He  waited  grimly  while  three  more  days  went  by.  The 
fourth  brought  a  post-card  hoping  that  he  was  very  well. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  459 

6 

By  the  end  of  March  Ireland  was  pretty  thoroughly 
awake.  Recruits  were  pouring  into  the  Volunteers,  whole 
companies  of  Redmondite  Volunteers  were  transferring  their 
allegiance,  country  corps  that  had  been  dormant  since  the 
split  were  reviving,  and  the  activity  of  1913  recommenced. 
Recruiting  meetings  for  the  British  Army  found  it  increas- 
ingly harder  to  get  a  hearing,  frequently  they  had  to  be 
cancelled  for  lack  of  an  audience,  and  the  number  of  recruits 
obtained  was  negligible.  The  Volunteers  were  now  the 
most  vital  force  in  Irish  politics.  Still  small  in  numbers 
their  energy  and  ability  were  tremendous.  They  took  the 
lead  whenever  any  Irish  interest  was  threatened  by  West- 
minster; they  dominated  the  Gaelic  League;  student  Volun- 
teers permeated  the  life  of  University  College,  controlled  the 
societies,  were  the  leaders  of  the  domestic  politics  of  the 
College,  and  made  of  its  magazine  a  Volunteer  organ;  in 
those  villages  in  the  country  where  the  Volunteers  were 
strong  the  police  had  ceased  to  be  petty  tyrants  and  were 
treated  with  the  contempt  they  deserved.  Irish  Unionists 
took  serious  alarm  at  the  complexion  of  things,  and  ques- 
tions began  to  be  asked  in  Parliament.  The  Parliamentary- 
leaders  made  new  protestations  of  loyality  and  proceeded 
to  apologize  and  explain  matters.  They  attributed  the 
changed  spirit  in  Ireland  to  the  re-actionary  policy  of  the 
Ascendancy,  to  the  introduction  of  Conscription,  to  the 
Government's  repeated  rejection  of  their  own  advice,  to  the 
repressive  measures  of  the  military,  to  German  gold  —  to 
anything  rather  than  to  a  revival  of  national  spirit  which 
•was  disgusted  with  the  Party's  own  slavishness  surrender, 
and  lack  of  policy. 

But,  while  externally  the  position  of  the  Volunteers  be- 
came every  day  more  secure,  internally  their  affairs  were 
growing  more  and  more  unsatisfactory. 

"  I  feel  as  if  we're  sitting  on  a  volcano,"  said  Stephen  to 
O'Dwyer.  "  The  Pearse  crowd  have  given  us  the  most 
definite  assurance  possible  that  they  don't  intend  to  rebel, 


460  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

but  I  simply  don't  believe  them.  Mallow  asked  me  the 
other  day  under  what  circumstances  I'd  go  into  rebellion. 
I  told  him  that  without  the  help  of  fifty  thousand  foreign 
soldiers  and  as  many  more  rifles  extra  the  thing  would  be 
suicide  and  disastrous  to  the  country.  '  I  quite  agree  with 
you,'  says  he,  but  his  eye  couldn't  deceive  me.  They're  up 
to  a  deep  game  I'm  sure." 

"  Why  not  recall  the  Convention  ?  " 

"  I've  put  that  to  our  crowd  a  hundred  times  but  they 
keep  shirking  the  idea.  They  say  we've  no  case  to  put  be- 
fore it  and  that  if  we  had  we'd  only  cause  a  split.  Well, 
I'd  risk  it,  but  they  won't." 

"  A  split  would  be  better  than  a  rebellion  anyway." 

"  They're  hoping  against  hope  that  there'll  be  no  re- 
bellion." 

"  They  may  give  up  hope,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Unless  we 
take  immediate  action  the  rebellion  will  be  upon  us  before 
we  know  where  we  are." 

"  Hello !     Have  you  struck  on  a  new  plot  ?  ", 

"  No.     But  look  at  this." 

He  took  from  his  pocket  a  folded  periodical  and  handed 
it  to  Stephen.  It  was  a  copy  of  that  month's  Manannan. 

"  Page  four,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

"Where  have  I  seen  this  before?"  mused  Stephen,  and 
read  out: 

"  IGNIS  IMMORTALIS. 
Seven  spears  in  the  day  of  light 

Shall  avenge,  with  might  our  blood  and  tears. 
Seven  seers  shall  in  death  indict 
The  blast  and  blight  of  the  bitter  years. 

It  sounds  familiar,  somehow." 

"  Mallow  read  it  to  us  two  years  ago  when  we  called  at 
his  house  with  Lascelles." 

"  I  remember." 

"  That's  a  swan-song  for  you." 

"What  does  it  all  mean?" 

"  I'll  explain  it  to  you.     I  know  the  tricks  of  the  trade. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  461 

The  '  seven  spears '  and  the  '  seven  seers  '  are  the  seven 
elopers.  The  '  day  of  light '  means  the  day  of  the  insurrec- 
tion. The  rest  is  obvious.  And  I  think  the  fact  that  he 
composed  the  thing  two  years  ago  and  only  publishes  it 
now  means  that  the  bust  up  is  close  at  hand." 

"  Hm.     Somewhat  fantastic." 

"  Life  is  more  fantastic  than  poetry.  I'll  stake  my  neck 
on  this.  Read  the  second  verse." 

Stephen  resumed: 

"  Seven  victims  upon  the  altar 

Shall  sing  a  psalter  of  faith  renewed. 

The  flame  rekindled  no  more  shall  falter 

Nor  word-wise  palter  the  multitude. 

Double  Dutch  to  me,"  he  said. 

"  It  means  that  they  don't  hope  for  success,  but  mean  the 
whole  thing  as  a  blood-sacrifice  to  restore  the  national 
spirit." 

"What's  wrong  with  the  national  spirit?  It's  coming 
along  fine  as  far  as  I  can  see." 

"  Poetical  impatience,  my  boy.  They  like  the  thing  done 
dramatically." 

"  Well,  Mallow  and  Co.  are  welcome  to  make  a  blood- 
sacrifice  of  themselves  if  they  like,  but  I  object  to  their 
playing  the  game  on  me.  I'll  be  no  bleeding  corpse  in  a 
slaughtered  heap  for  Pearse  to  die  on." 

"  Nor  I.  And  it's  a  rank  betrayal  of  the  men,  too.  They 
trusted  us  to  lead  them  to  some  sort  of  success,  not  to  make 
sanguinary  object-lessons  of  them." 

"  This'll  give  the  English  just  the  chance  they  want,  to 
grind  us  back  into  the  mud  we're  barely  rising  from.  They 
could  crush  a  rebellion  in  a  month,  dragon  the  whole  coun- 
try, and  apply  conscription  good  and  hard." 

"  Good  God,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  A  hundred  more  years 
of  slavery.  The  blind  idiots!  " 

"  After  this,"  said  Stephen,  "  you'll  probably  begin  to 
share  my  distrust  of  poets  and  poetry." 

"•I've   more  than   poetry  to   go  on,"   replied   O'Dwyer, 


462  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  I  was  down  at  Ballylangan  yesterday  and  Crowley  showed 
me  a  document  he'd  just  received  from  Headquarters  — 
contingent  orders  in  the  event  of  military  action  being  de- 
cided on." 

"  No  such  orders  have  been  issued  from  Headquar- 
ters." 

"  I  thought  as  much.  These  were  signed,  'Austin  Mal- 
low, By  Order  of  the  Executive.'  " 

"  Positive  evidence  at  last.  Get  me  a  copy  of  that  and 
I'll  face  them  with  it  on  Wednesday." 

"  The  impudence  of  them,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Who 
knows  but  we'll  find  our  own  names  some  day  fixed  to  an 
order  for  insurrection?  ...  I  must  write  to  Crowley." 

7 

When  Bernard  emerged  from  gaol  he  was  in  such  a  state 
of  pent  up  passion  and  curiosity  that  he  would  have  rushed 
instantly  to  Mabel's  house  had  not  his  mother  met  him  at 
the  gate  in  a  taxi  and  taken  him  home  with  her. 

"  WTiat'll  the  governor  say?  "  he  asked. 

"  He  won't  be  back  from  his  rounds  till  three,  and  he'll 
be  stuck  in  his  consulting  room  for  a  couple  of  hours  after. 
.  .  .My  darling  boy,  how  thin  you've  got." 

Merrion  Square  was  reached  in  a  few  minutes.  In  the 
breakfast  room  Bernard  found  Sandy  lying  on  a  sofa  near 
the  window,  a  ghost  of  his  former  self. 

"  Some  crock,  amn't  I,"  he  said  with  a  smile.  "  How- 
ever, I'm  told  they  make  wooden  ones  just  as  good  now- 
adays." 

"  We  live  in  a  scientific  age,"  said  Bernard.  "  Whether 
they  smash  us  up  or  put  us  together  again  it's  all  done 
scientifically.  Progress  is  a  wonderful  thing." 

"  Cynical  as  ever,"  chuckled  Sandy. 

By  some  instinct  Lady  Lascelles  had  hit  upon  the  exact 
meal  to  satisfy  Bernard  at  the  moment.  A  huge  dish  of 
bacon  and  eggs  and  sausages,  steaming  hot,  was  brought  in, 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  463 

together  with  coffee,  toast,  jam,  and  muffins,  and  in  a  couple 
of  seconds  he  was  stuffing  himself  ravenously. 

"  By  gad,  you  can  put  a  meal  away,"  said  Sandy,  ad- 
miringly. "  Did  they  starve  you,  old  chap?  " 

"  Damn  nearly,"  said  Bernard,  his  mouth  full.  "  This 
kind  of  meal  has  haunted  my  dreams  for  four  months.  .  .  . 
How  goes  the  war  for  truth  and  freedom  and  Christianity 
and  the  rest  of  it?  " 

"  Ugh!  "  ejaculated  Sandy.     "  Don't  talk  about  it." 

"  Why  ?     What's  happened  ?  " 

"  These  bloody  English,"  said  Sandy  with  tremendous 
emphasis.  "  By  gad,  I'm  sick  of  them.  So  are  all  the 
Irish  soldiers,  and  as  for  the  Colonials,  I  believe  they  hate 
them  more  than  the  enemy." 

"  Why?     What  have  they  done?  " 

"  They're  yellow,  my  dear  Bernard.  You  can't  rely  on 
them.  They  let  you  down.  .  .  .  Do  you  know,  the  Irish 
and  Colonial  regiments  are  beginning  to  refuse  to  go  into 
action  if  there's  an  English  regiment  on  their  flanks.  They 
can't  be  relied  on  to  go  over  the  top,  and,  of  course,  the  flank 
they're  on  gets  left  in  the  lurch.  .  .  .  That's  how  I  got 
knocked  out.  Our  battalion  did  its  work  in  fine  style, 
cleared  out  three  lines  of  Turkish  trenches  and  was  just 
going  to  settle  down  when  we  found  ourselves  isolated. 
The  English  battalions  on  each  side  of  us  had  failed  to  come 
up,  so  we  had  to  retreat,  and  on  the  way  back  I  got  done  in 
.  .  .  Lord,  those  bloody  English!  I've  been  a  Shin  from 
that  moment." 

"  Hm!  "  said  Bernard.  "  The  failure  of  an  English  regi- 
ment doesn't  seem  to  me  to  be  a  very  adequate  reason  for  a 
complete  change  of  political  conviction." 

"  You  prosy  old  fish,"  jeered  Sandy.  "  I  thought  all 
you  Shins  hated  the  English  like  poison." 

"  Exactly.  We  hate  them  like  poison.  You  hate  poison 
when  it's  boiling  in  your  veins  or  hacking  its  way  through 
your  intestines,  but  you  wouldn't  waste  time  hating  it  in 


464  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

bottle,  or  after  the  mustard-and-water  have  transferred  it 
from  you  to  a  bowl." 

"  That's  a  lovely  metaphor,"  said  Sandy.  "  I  must  make 
a  note  of  it.  ...  Well,  my  heart  is  with  the  Shins  anyway, 
and  I  wish  I  could  be  some  use  to  them.  Unfortunately, 
my  body's  a  goner,  and  I  never  had  any  brains  worth  speak- 
ing about.  .  .  .  Lord,  those  bloody  English." 

"  Have  you  used  that  expletive  in  the  presence  of  the 
governor?  " 

"  Yes,  and  by  gad,  his  face  turned  all  the  colours  of  the 
Union  Jack.  ...  If  you've  finished  gorging,  the  mater 
wants  to  see  you  in  her  room." 

"What  for?" 

"  Go  and  see." 

He  went  upstairs  and  found  his  mother  in  her  room. 
She  had  changed  into  a  black  dress. 

"  I've  something  to  tell  you,  Bernard,"  she  began,  but 
Bernard  had  already  guessed  what  it  was. 

"  Eugene  ?  "  he  said,  and  she  nodded. 

"Pead?" 

"  He  was  killed  in  a  trench-raid  soon  after  Christmas. 
...  I  thought  it  better  not  to  tell  you  in  prison  ..." 

Bernard  was  neither  shocked  nor  very  much  grieved,  for 
the  news  was  only  to  be  expected  and  he  and  Eugene  had 
never  been  very  intimate.  He  suffered,  however,  what  was 
perhaps  a  more  trying  emotion:  remorse.  As  on  the  day 
when  they  had  parted,  he  realized  poignantly  how  snap- 
pish and  unkind  he  had  often  been  to  his  brother,  and  how 
impatient  of  his  harmless  short-comings.  Poor  Eugene, 
what  a  gentle,  kindly  fellow  he  was:  how  soft  and  woman- 
like the  touch  of  his  hand :  how  serene  and  winsome  his 
smile.  It  was  a  cruel  fate  that  sent  him  who  had  never 
spoken  an  unkind  word,  who  had  never  given  pain  to  man 
or  beast,  who  should  have  been  a  loving  husband  and  father, 
out  to  that  bloody  shambles  in  Flanders.  What  unmiti- 
gated horror  must  the  war  have  held  for  this  sensitive  soul. 
Bernard  could  picture  the  last  cruel  scene:  the  surprise  at- 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  465 

tack  by  night:  the  grey-coated  raiders  pouring  into  the 
trench:  the  short  sharp  struggle;  Eugene,  wincing  from 
violence  and  hesitating  to  strike,  ripped  with  a  bayonet  and 
left  to  die  in  agony.  And  now  all  that  he  had  known  of 
his  brother  lay  rotting  in  a  nameless  grave.  For  what? 
Would  that  the  ghosts  of  him  and  a  thousand  other  innocents 
like  him  could  return  to  earth  and  face  the  politicians  with 
that  question. 

Bernard  took  an  early  leave  of  his  mother  and  Sandy 
and  hastened  to  his  flat  in  Harcourt  Street.  He  found  there 
a  heap  of  letters,  including  three  from  Willoughby  and  one 
from  Eugene  written  the  day  before  his  death:  a  gay,  yet 
wistful  document  the  reading  of  which  brought  tears  to  Ber- 
nard's eyes.  Almost  he  fancied  he  could  hear  the  dead  voice 
speaking  the  written  words.  ...  In  due  course  he  went  to 
meet  Mabel  at  the  office  where  she  worked,  but  having 
waited  fruitlessly  for  ten  minutes  after  all  the  other  girls 
passed  out,  he  hurried  over  to  her  home,  puzzled  and  appre- 
hensive. The  maid-of  all-work  admitted  him. 

"  Is  Miss  Mabel  in?  " 

"  No,  sir." 

"Mrs.  Harvey,  then?  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

She  showed  him  into  the  sitting-room,  where  he  had  to 
wait  five  infuriating  minutes  before  Mrs.  Harvey  deigned 
to  come  down.  The  moment  she  appeared  he  blurted  out: 

"Where's  Mabel?" 

Exasperatingly  placid,  Mrs.  Harvey  deposited  her  jelly- 
like  bulk  in  an  armchair,  serenely  arranging  the  sit  of  her 
dress  before  replying. 

"  I  didn't  quite  catch  your  remark,"  she  said,  in  a  casual 
tone.  "  Would  you  mind  closing  the  door?  " 

Bernard  slammed  it  with  a  movement  of  his  foot,  and 
demanded  again: 

"Where's  Mabel?" 

"  I'm  not  sure  that  it  isn't  an  impertinent  question,  but 
she's  gone  out  for  a  walk  —  with  her  fiance." 


466  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"With  her  what*" 

"  Her  fiance." 

"  But  I'm  her  fiance." 

"  Nonsense,  my  dear  boy.  That  engagement  wasn't  seri- 
ous. A  mere  boy-and-girl  affair,  I  always  regarded  it.  It 
was  clearly  understood  that  she  was  at  liberty  to  change  her 
mind  if  someone  who  could  support  a  wife  made  her  an 
offer." 

"  I  never  understood  that.     I  was  perfectly  serious." 

"  If  you  were,  I'm  afraid  I  saw  no  sign  of  it.  A  young 
man  who  is  really  in  earnest  works  hard  at  his  profession 
and  doesn't  waste  time  over  politics  and  suchlike  nonsense. 
I  remember  giving  you  some  such  advice  myself  when  you 
first  came  to  ask  my  approval.  Well,  you  were  too  high 
and  mighty  to  listen,  and  must  needs  go  gallivanting  round 
the  country  organizing  sedition  and  landing  yourself  in 
prison.  I  don't  think  that  shows  much  consideration  for 
my  daughter." 

Bernard  heard  this  speech  with  amazement.  He  had  not 
yet  fully  realized  the  situation. 

"  You  —  you're  not  fair  to  me,"  he  stammered. 

Mrs.  Harvey  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"  I  have  my  daughter's  interests  to  consider,"  she  said. 

"  You've  set  her  against  me,"  cried  Bernard,  angrily. 
"  I  don't  believe  she'd  have  given  me  up  of  her  own  accord. 
She  never  said  a  word  about  it  in  her  letters." 

"  No  doubt  she  thought  you  had  enough  to  worry  you 
already." 

"  Well,  I  won't  believe  she's  ceased  to  care  for  me  till 
I've  heard  it  from  her  own  lips." 

"  You  may  believe  it  or  not  as  you  like.  She's  to  be 
married  in  a  fortnight." 

Bernard  was  completely  staggered. 

"  Married?  "  he  gasped. 

"  Yes.  They're  to  be  married  very  quietly,"  said  Mrs. 
Harvey,  imperturbably.  "  Captain  Musgrave's  leave  is 
nearly  over  and  he  has  to  return  to  India  ..." 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  467 

"  Captain  Musgrave  ?  "  said  Bernard. 

"  My  future  son-in-law.  A  charming  man,  Bernard,  and 
very  well  off.  A  member  of  a  good  old  English  family. 
Probably  you  know  him.  He  was  educated  at  Ashbury." 

A  horrible  recollection  shot  through  Bernard's  mind:  a 
scene  of  his  first  days  at  school  that  had  been  indelibly 
printed  in  his  memory. 

"  Stanley  Musgrave?  "  he  asked. 

"  Yes." 

"  My  God !  "  exclaimed  Bernard. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Harvey. 

"  Nothing,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Have  you  any  further  questions?  "  said  Mrs.  Harvey. 

Bernard  turned  and  left  the  room.  In  the  hall  he  nearly 
collided  with  Molly. 

"  Hello,  Bernard,"  she  said.  Then  she  saw  his  face. 
"  I  say,  I'm  sorry  about  Mabel,"  she  said.  "  It's  jolly  rot- 
ten of  her.  However,  I'd  forget  it,  if  I  were  you.  If  you 
saw  the  thing  she's  chosen  the  shock  to  your  vanity  would 
cure  your  heartache." 

Bernard  found  himself  unable  to  answer.  Molly  pressed 
his  hand  sympathetically  and  let  him  out  without  further 
speech. 

Heedless  of  his  direction  he  strode  rapidly  through  the 
streets,  his  mind  a  chaos  of  wonder,  jealousy,  anger,  grief 
and  humiliation.  A  shower  of  rain  fell  presently  and  for  a 
long  time  remained  unnoticed,  but  eventually  it  drenched 
him  through  and  so  drove  him  home. 

It  was  nearly  dawn  before  he  slept. 

8 

He  wrote  to  Mabel  insisting  on  seeing  her  once  alone. 
She  complied,  appointing  an  hour  and  a  certain  place  in 
Stephen's  Green.  They  exchanged  not  a  word  when  they 
met,  and  Bernard  led  the  way  to  a  secluded  seat.  They  sat 
down  and  remained  silent  for  a  few  minutes,  Bernard  draw- 
ing lines  in  the  gravel  with  his  walking  stick,  and  Mabel 


468  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

fidgeting  with  her  glove.  All  around  them  were  the  signs  of 
another  Spring:  budding  trees,  chirping  birds,  ducks  quack- 
ing on  the  pond,  the  sun  blazing  out  at  intervals  when  the 
clouds  permitted  .  .  . 

"  What's  the  meaning  of  it  all?  "  said  Bernard,  at  length. 

She  could  not  answer  for  a  while.  The  reasons  that  had 
urged  her  seemed  now  so  small  and  mean.  Of  course,  her 
mother  was  at  the  bottom  of  it.  Bernard  had  been  only 
a  week  in  gaol  when  she  had  begun  to  drop  stray  morsels 
of  Mrs.  Moffat's  revelations  in  Mabel's  way;  a  little  later 
Mrs.  Moffat,  herself,  was  brought  on  the  scene;  Mabel  had 
flounced  out  of  the  room  at  the  first  word,  but  the  germ  of 
doubt  had  found  its  entry.  Mrs.  Harvey's  subtle  methods 
of  work  after  that  defy  analysis.  She  hinted  that  Bernard's 
p re-occupation  with  politics  spoke  badly  for  his  affections; 
she  repeated  her  forebodings  about  his  financial  prospects; 
she  dwelt  on  the  social  stigma  involved  in  imprisonment. 
She  did  it  all  so  lightly  and  casually  that  no  purpose  could  be 
discerned  behind  it.  ...  Then  Captain  Musgrave  began  to 
appear  more  frequently.  He  had  been  introduced  to  Mrs. 
Harvey  some  time  before  by  a  friend  of  former  days,  and 
had  been  one  of  those  stray  guests  whose  entertainment  had 
fallen  to  Mabel,  of  which  she  had  complained  to  Bernard  on 
a  bygone  day  in  Cloughaneely.  It  was  at  this  stage  that  her 
first  letter  to  Bernard  became  due,  and  in  jealous  anger 
against  the  past  she  suspected  she  wrote  the  brief  cold  note 
which  had  so  puzzled  him.  His  answering  love-letter  mol- 
lified her  feelings  but  slightly,  and  she  allowed  herself,  half 
out  of  a  desire  to  be  revenged  on  Bernard,  half  out  of  nat- 
ural coquetry,  to  enjoy  Musgrave's  advances  and  even  faintly 
to  reciprocate.  At  this  point  her  mother  slipped  in  a  hint 
of  Musgrave's  wealth  and  position,  and  one  day,  with  that 
conscious  tact  which  is  the  height  of  tactlessness,  withdrew 
from  the  sitting-room  in  the  very  middle  of  afternoon  tea  in 
order  to  leave  them  alone  together.  Subsequently,  the  Cap- 
tain was  allowed  to  take  the  whole  family  to  the  pantomime  ; 
Mabel  was  given  the  seat  next  to  him;  and  in  the  interval, 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  469 

Mrs.  Harvey's  ever-ready  tact  sent  them  out  alone  to  the 
buffet  for  coffee.  Mabel  was  in  such  an  undecided  frame 
of  mind  at  the  end  of  another  month  that  she  scribbled  off 
an  even  shorter  note  than  the  previous  one  to  Bernard,  and 
then  took  offence  at  his  reply.  She  began  to  look  kindly  on 
Musgrave  now:  in  her  innocence  of  men  and  the  world 
(she  had,  of  course,  like  all  Catholic  girls,  been  educated  at 
a  Convent)  she  mistook  for  love  and  kindness  what  was  only 
half-veiled  sensuality,  and  favourably  compared  his  consider- 
ate devotion  with  Bernard's  off-hand  comradeship.  Bernard 
had  sometimes  found  it  necessary  to  control  his  honest  passion 
with  an  enforced  frigidity  that  made  innocent  Mabel  doubt 
his  ardour:  Musgrave,  having  never  in  his  life  controlled 
his  desires,  was  actuated  by  no  straining  spirit  made  violent 
by  repression,  but  exuded  a  kind  of  sensual  benevolence  that 
looked  for  stimulation.  Mabel  began  to  look  to  him  as  a 
lover  with  pleasurable  anticipation.  .  .  .  He  proposed  to 
her  in  the  middle  of  the  third  month,  and  after  consulting 
with  her  mother,  she  accepted  him  the  following  day.  Mrs. 
Harvey  valued  the  engagement- ring  at  a  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  .  .  . 

And  now  Mabel  had  to  explain  all  this  to  Bernard.  She 
could  not  bring  herself  to  mention  Mrs.  Moffat's  scandalous 
stories:  looking  at  his  face  she  found  she  could  not  believe 
them  any  longer,  and  her  modesty  would  not  have  permitted 
her  to  discuss  such  a  subject  in  any  case.  She  put  her  excuse 
before  him  brokenly: 

"  I  thought,  perhaps  .  .  .  you  didn't  seem  to  love  me  as 
much  as  at  first.  ...  I  thought  you  were  getting  tired  of 
me  ..." 

"  Mabel,  how  could  you  imagine  such  a  thing?  Did  I 
give  any  sign  of  it?  " 

"  You  —  you  wouldn't  work  at  your  profession.  .  .  . 
You  didn't  seem  in  any  hurry  to  get  married.  .  .  .  You 
went  on  with  your  writing  and  drilling  while  I  was  slaving 
away  in  that  horrid  old  office.  .  .  .  Bernard,  you  don't 
know  how  tired  I  was  of  that  work  ...  so  dull  and  mo- 


470  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

notonous  .  .  .  never  any  fresh  air  ...  hardly  any  holidays 
...  a  long  scramble.  ...  I  couldn't  have  borne  it  any 
longer,  Bernard.  I  looked  to  you  to  take  me  out  of  it,  and 
I  hoped  for  such  happiness  with  you.  And  you  didn't  seem 
to  care,  so  long  as  you  had  your  politics.  .  .  .  And  then 
my  home,  Bernard.  The  perpetual  saving  and  scraping  .  .  . 
the  counting  of  pennies  .  .  .  the  three  of  us  sleeping  in  one 
stuffy  little  room  so  as  to  have  more  space  for  lodgers.  .  .  . 
Mother  always  at  us  for  extravagance  if  we  bought  ourselves 
chocolates  or  kept  the  light  on  at  night  to  read.  ...  It  was 
bad  enough  before  the  war,  but  now  —  Bernard,  I  couldn't 
bear  it  any  more.  It  was  killing  me.  .  .  .  Don't  think  too 
badly  of  me,  dear.  I  ...  I  felt  I  was  wearing  out.  You 
wouldn't  be  able  to  marry  me  for  another  two  years,  perhaps. 
.  .  .  And  you  mightn't  have  cared  for  me  then  ..." 

She  paused.  Bernard  remained  silent,  savagely  digging  at 
the  ground  with  the  end  of  his  stick.  A  sparrow  chirped 
monotonously  in  the  plane-tree  overhead. 

"  So  it  comes  to  this,"  said  Bernard,  hoarsely,  "  that 
you've  sold  yourself.  .  .  .  Sold  yourself.  And  without  the 
excuse  of  necessity  for  which  less  fortunate  women  sell 
themselves.  You've  sold  yourself  for  luxuries:  for  theatres 
and  satin  dresses.  .  .  .  My  God,  aren't  your  body  and  soul 
more  value  to  you  than  that?  .  .  .  And  to  throw  me  aside 
who  love  you  for  a  beast  like  Musgrave!  " 

"  Don't  say  that,"  said  Mabel.     "  He's  very  kind." 

"  Kind !  "  Horrible  pictures  passed  before  Bernard's 
mind.  So  Musgrave  was  kind?  He  could  imagine  the 
form  his  kindness  took,  and  shuddered.  In  that  moment  the 
divinity  slipped  away  from  Mabel  before  his  eyes,  and  she 
became  as  something  soiled.  He  had  never  realized  before 
that  women  are  human :  that  good  women  have  passions 
like  good  men.  The  thought  of  his  Mabel,  his  innocent, 
joyous  Mabel,  yielding  to  a  sensual  impulse,  horrified 
him. 

There  was  a  long  and  painful  silence.  They  had  ceased 
even  to  fidget,  and  looked  into  one  another's  eyes. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  471 

"  Well,"  said  Bernard  at  length,  "  I  suppose  there's  noth- 
ing more  to  be  said." 

Mabel  tried  to  speak,  but  the  words  refused  to  come. 
Bernard  rose. 

"Good-bye,"  he  jerked  out;  hesitated  a  moment;  then 
turned  on  his  heel  and  strode  away  down  the  path  .  .  . 

Mabel  remained  in  motionless  reverie  for  the  best  part 
of  an  hour,  and  then  wearily  walked  home. 

Bernard  would  not  have  had  her  now  if  he  could :  she  was 
spoilt  for  him  for  ever  by  the  kiss  of  Musgrave. 

"The  thought  of  it!  Ugh!  The  swine!  The  sensual, 
lecherous  beast!  A  toad,  a  cuttle-fish  were  cleaner  .  .  . 
He  holds  her  with  those  flabby  groping  hands  of  his  and 
kisses  her  —  my  God !  —  kisses  her  with  that  abominable 
mouth,  the  mouth  that  has  dabbled  in  foulness  and  played 
with  sin.  Oh,  the  pollution  of  it!  A  nymph  yielding  to  a 
satyr!" 

In  his  madness  he  passed  his  own  door  unheeding  and 
walked  half  the  way  to  Dolphin's  Barn. 

"Vampire!"  he  cried  in  his  heart.  "Why  couldn't  he 
leave  my  little  girl  alone  and  stick  to  his  harlots  and  pleasure- 
girls?  Flogging  a  jaded  appetite,  I  suppose." 

Immersed  all  his  life  in  ideas  he  knew  but  little  of  human- 
ity: did  not  know  that  licentiousness  hankers  after  innocence. 
.  .  .  Discovering  where  he  was  he  turned  back  and  made  for 
home.  He  passed  it  once  more  before  entering. 

He  poured  out  some  whiskey.     Then: 

"  No.  That's  a  mug's  game,"  he  said.  "  Only  drink 
when  you're  happy,  or  you  spoil  both  yourself  and  the 
drink." 

The  morning  paper  was  on  the  table  and  he  picked  it  up. 
Idly  turning  the  pages  his  eye  fell  on  a  heading  in  the 
correspondence  column : 

THE  HORROR  OF  JAILS 
Letter  from  Mr.  Cyril   Umpleby. 

In  the  most  fluent  journalese  Mr.  Umpleby  dissertated  on 


472  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

the  soul  agony  he  had  endured  in  the  inartistic  surround- 
ings of  Mountjoy.  It  was  a  heart-rending  picture  and  it 
made  Bernard  laugh. 

"  Vain  little  beast,"  he  said,  and  read  the  whole  news- 
paper through,  advertisements  and  all,  forgetting  Mabel  in 
the  process. 

But  he  hungered  for  her  still.  He  sought  exhaustion  in 
long  walks  and  so  secured  sleep,  but  she  haunted  his  dreams. 
He  dreamed  once  that  the  Musgrave  episode  had  been  a 
dream,  and  that  on  emerging  from  gaol  he  beheld  Mabel 
waiting  for  him  at  the  gate.  She  smiled  at  him  as  she 
had  been  wont  to  do;  he  advanced  to  take  her  in  his  arms; 
but  in  the  midst  of  the  ineffable  joy  of  her  kiss  he  awoke, 
his  sorrow  and  disappointment  all  the  more  intensified.  .  .  . 
He  could  take  no  food  though  his  sorely  tried  body  clam- 
oured for  it.  He  could  barely  summon  up  the  energy  to 
dress  himself  in  the  morning;  he  put  on  whatever  came  handy 
and  let  his  hair  go  wild;  one  night  after  a  long  walk  he 
flung  himself  down  on  the  outside  of  his  bed  and  fell  asleep 
in  his  clothes.  He  became  utterly  careless  of  life. 

He  shirked  meeting  his  friends.  On  several  occasions 
O'Dwyer,  Hektor,  and  Stephen  called,  but  they  always 
found  him  from  home.  Stephen  left  a  note  once  saying 
that  he  wished  to  speak  to  him  about  some  new  develop- 
ments in  the  political  situation,  but  Bernard  paid  no  atten- 
tion. On  another  occasion  they  met  in  the  street,  but  Ber- 
nard was  distraught,  and  after  a  few  commonplaces  they 
separated. 

"  I  met  Lascelles  today,"  said  Stephen  to  Hektor.  "  He 
was  looking  ghastly.  I  never  imagined  gaol  could  have  such 
an  effect  on  a  man." 

"  It's  more  than  gaol  that's  playing  the  deuce  with  Ber- 
nard," said  Hektor.  "  Haven't  you  heard  that  he  was  shook 
by  that  girl  he  was  engaged  to  ?  " 

"  Surely  that  wouldn't  do  it!  "  said  Stephen. 

Passers-by  in  the  street  used  to  stare  at  Bernard's  pale, 
hollow  cheeks  and  blazing  eyes.  He  came  near  to  a  break- 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  473 

down,  but  then  Nature  reasserted  herself  and  sheer  hunger 
drove  him  to  eat.  He  began  to  mend  physically  from  that 
out,  but  it  was  a  long  time  before  his  melancholy  grew  any 
less.  From  the  midst  of  his  own  gloom  he  looked  forth  dis- 
tastefully on  the  movements  of  a  spring-enlivened  world. 

He  had  a  last  glimpse  of  Mabel  two  days  before  her  mar- 
riage. He  had  gone  for  a  stroll  by  himself  in  the  Phoenix 
Park  and  was  walking  along  a  narrow,  unfrequented  path, 
admiring  the  budding  trees  and  bitterly  wishing  for  one  to 
share  his  admiration,  when  she  came  round  a  corner  beside 
a  khaki-clad  figure.  Bernard's  heart  stopped  still  for  a  mo- 
ment and  then  began  beating  furiously.  Mabel's  face  went 
first  white  and  then  red.  Bernard  looked  at  his  rival.  Mus- 
grave  at  thirty  was,  in  appearance  at  any  rate,  an  improve- 
ment on  Musgrave  at  seventeen.  Military  training  had 
eliminated  some  of  the  grossness  of  his  figure,  straightened 
his  back,  and  smartened  his  slouching  gait.  He  wore  a 
moustache,  and  his  horrible  teeth  had  been  replaced  by  a 
well-made  artificial  set  that  gave  a  fictitious  firmness  to  the 
salacious  lips  that  had  slobbered  at  Bernard  in  the  dark  lobby 
thirteen  years  before.  He  smiled  sheepishly  at  Bernard, 
whom  he  evidently  recognized.  Bernard  mechanically,  raised 
his  hat.  Musgrave  saluted.  They  passed  each  other  by  and 
went  out  of  each  other's  lives  .  .  . 

Next  day  he  received  a  letter  from  Janet  Morecambe. 
She  had  recently  heard  of  his  arrest,  and  she  wrote  to  con- 
gratulate him  on  having  found  himself  at  last  and  to  express 
a  hope  that  his  confinement  had  done  him  no  harm.  Bernard 
sat  staring  at  the  letter  and  then  violently  apostrophized 
himself : 

"You  damned  fool!  You  shallow,  sensual  idiot!  You 
might  have  had  her  for  the  asking  and  you  rejected  her. 
You  deserve  everything  you've  got." 

He  read  the  letter  through  over  and  over  again,  and  then 
carefully  placed  it  in  his  breast  pocket. 


474  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

9 

"  Baffled  again,"  said  Stephen  to  O'Dwyer  in  his  room 
at  the  Neptune.  "  Mallow  took  that  Order  without  turning 
a  hair.  '  I  understood,'  says  he,  as  cool  as  a  cucumber,  '  that 
it  was  unnecessary  for  Directors  to  submit  the  routine  work 
of  their  departments  to  the  Executive.'  '  There  was  noth- 
ing routine  about  this,'  said  I.  '  Excuse  me,'  said  he,  '  but 
if  you  will  examine  the  orders  closely  you  will  see  that 
they  are  entirely  contingent  upon  general  orders,  and  that 
they  deal  only  with  demolitions,  which  is  my  particular 
department.'  Well  the  Executive  accepted  the  explanation 
and  said  it  mustn't  occur  again.  So  of  course  they'll  take 
care  never  to  get  found  out  again.  They'll  send  no  more 
orders  to  Crowley." 

"  Do  you  know,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  if  their  party  supplies 
the  knaves  on  the  Executive,  ours  supplies  the  fools.  I  feel 
very  uneasy  about  things.  ...  I  wish  we  had  Lascelles 
with  us  again.  He  has  very  sound  dope  to  hand  out  as  a 
rule,  and  it  would  distract  him  from  worrying  about  that 
woman.  She  was  married  a  few  days  ago,  by  the  way,  to 
a  damned  Englishman.  May  his  skin  be  tanned  and  made 
into  slippers  for  the  Kaiser." 

"  McGurk  and  O'Flaherty  have  gone  to  fetch  him  over 
here  to  tea,  if  they  can  find  him.  But  he's  generally  out." 

"  Is  McGurk  staying  here  now?  " 

"  Yes.     He  moved  in  about  a  week  ago." 

"  By  Jove,  this  is  a  regular  Factionists'  Home.  Wish  you 
were  nearer  Merrion  Street  and  I'd  move  in  too." 

"How's  your  own  little  affair  progressing?"  asked 
Stephen  with  a  smile. 

"  Not  so  bad.  I  took  her  to  the  pictures  yesterday.  I 
wonder  could  I  dare  ask  her  to  come  to  the  D'Oyly  Carte 
Operas  in  Easter  Week." 

"  I'm  afraid  I'm  not  an  expert  in  those  matters,  but  why 
not  try?  She  can  only  refuse." 

"  Yes,  but  a  refusal's  such  a  blow.  It  seems  to  discount 
all  the  favourable  omens  for  weeks  before  it." 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  475 

"  Faint  heart,  etcetera." 

"  I  know  what  I'll  do.  I'll  buy  the  tickets  before  asking 
her,  and  then  she  can't  refuse." 

"  Not  at  all  a  bad  plan,  as  far  as  my  limited  experience 
goes.  .  .  .  Come  down  and  have  some  tea.  The  others 
should  be  back  by  this  time." 

They  descended  to  the  coffee-room  and  sat  down  to  a 
plenteous,  if  inelegant  meal  of  tea,  bread  and  butter,  boiled 
eggs,  jam,  and  cake.  They  had  only  just  set  to  when  Hek- 
tor,  McGurk,  and  Bernard  arrived. 

"Hello,  O'Dwyer!"  cried  McGurk.  "How's  the 
form?" 

"  And  the  fair  Gladys?  "  added  Hektor. 

O'Dwyer  blushed  and  said  she  was  quite  well. 

"  Sit  down,  Bernard,"  said  McGurk.  "  Tea'll  be  up 
in  a  minute.  Ye  won't  scorn  a  humble  tea,  you  that's  used 
to  dining  late,  will  ye?  " 

Bernard  protested  his  entire  delight  with  the  arrangement, 
and  the  newcomers  drew  up  their  chairs  as  the  meal  was 
served  in. 

"Holy  murdher! "  exclaimed  McGurk.  "Ye  put  no 
sugar  in  me  tea,  Stephen." 

"  I  put  your  whole  ration  in,"  said  Stephen.  "  You  can 
have  some  more  if  you  don't  want  a  second  cup." 

"  Well  to  hell  with  the  war,"  said  McGurk.  "  Hektor, 
you  rotten  false  prophet,  how  long  more  are  the  Germans 
going  to  spend  taking  Verdun  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Hektor  gloomily.  "  They've  made 
a  bungle  somewhere,  I'm  afraid." 

"Poor  old  Ireland!"  said  McGurk.  "The  fates  are 
ag'in  her." 

"  They  tell  me  you're  qualified  at  last,  Hugo,"  said  Ber- 
nard. "When  are  you  going  to  start  practice?" 

"  Arrah,  what  are  ye  talking  about?  Haven't  I  done 
enough  for  one  year?  Say,  boys,  I've  been  and  gone  and 
got  me  exam.,  and  this  fella  wants  me  to  go  and  practise!" 
He  took  a  slice  of  bread  and  butter,  plastered  it  thickly  with 


476  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

jam,    bit  off  a  huge   mouthful,   and   turned   to   O'Dwyer. 

"  Been  writing  any  pothry  lately?  "  he  asked. 

O'Dwyer  shook  his  head. 

"  Felim  has  been  better  employed,"  suggested  Hektor. 

"  I  always  thought  courting  was  an  incentive  to  pothry," 
said  McGurk." 

"  Not  to  the  kind  of  poetry  you  like,  Hugo,"  said 
O'Dwyer. 

McGurk  burst  out  laughing  and  said : 

"  Janey  Mack,  he's  been  writing  love  pomes." 

O'Dwyer  blushed  red,  and  Stephen  intervened  on  his  be- 
half. 

"  Hold  your  tongue,  Hugo,"  he  said.  "  Pass  the  cake, 
Hektor." 

"  This  is  a  punk  cake,"  said  Hektor,  vainly  attempting 
to  cut  it  without  breaking  it  up.  "  Say,  boys,  we'll  have  to 
put  a  stop  to  the  war." 

Gathering  afterwards  in  the  smoke-room,  where  there 
happened  to  be  no  other  guests,  they  discussed  the  political 
situation.  Recent  developments  were  disclosed  to  Bernard 
who  received  them  with  incredulity.  He  was  not,  like  the 
others,  personally  acquainted  with  the  leaders  of  the  move- 
ment, but  he  had  always  felt  sure  that  they  were  reliable, 
since  their  down-trodden  cause  could  make  no  appeal  to 
men  who  were  not  patriotic,  unselfish,  and  honourable. 
Mallow  being  diseased,  he  left  out  of  account. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  these  men  that  ye've  trusted 
would  drag  us  into  an  insane  rebellion  by  trickery?"  he 
exclaimed  at  last. 

"  Every  word  I've  told  you  is  God's  truth,"  said  Stephen. 

"  The  meanness  and  treachery  of  it,"  said  Bernard.  "  I 
wouldn't  have  believed  it  of  them.  .  .  .  But  what  can  be 
done  ?  " 

"That's  what's  so  hard  to  decide.  They've  repeatedly 
sworn  that  there's  nothing  on  foot,  and  they've  explained 
away  any  positive  evidence  we've  produced.  If  we  recalled 
the  Convention  the  only  evidence  we  could  put  before  it 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  477 

would  be  our  recollections  of  certain  conversations,  the  order 
sent  to  Crowley,  and  a  poem  of  Austin  Mallow's.  We'd 
simply  be  laughed  at." 

"  Perhaps  you're  alarming  yourselves  unnecessarily,"  said 
Bernard.  "  If  your  case  is  so  very  unconvincing  how  does 
it  convince  yourselves?  " 

"  It's  not  a  case  where  one  can  take  any  risks,"  said 
Stephen. 

"  Mallow's  eyes  glaring  across  the  table  at  the  Dolphin 
were  convincing  enough  for  me,"  said  O'Dwyer. 

"  It's  the  devil  of  a  puzzle,"  said  Bernard.  "  What  good 
do  they  expect  from  a  rebellion  ?  " 

Stephen  explained. 

"  I'm  all  at  sea,"  said  Bernard.  "  It's  a  hopeless  muddle. 
I  suppose  we'll  just  have  to  keep  our  eyes  skinned  in  the 
hope  of  hitting  on  a  piece  of  evidence  that'll  appeal  to  the 
Convention." 

"  If  you  ask  my  advice,"  said  McGurk,  "  I'd  say:  '  Take 
no  risks.  Poison  their  tea  and  have  done  with  the  whole 
job.'  " 

10 

Towards  the  middle  of  April  Willoughby  came  to  spend 
the  last  three  days  of  a  fortnight's  leave  with  Bernard. 
The  latter  was  now  looking  more  like  his  old  self  again, 
but  his  friend  was  shocked  at  the  change  in  his  appearance. 

"  This  damned  Prussianism !  "  he  exclaimed. 

"  Why  do  you  call  it  Prussianism  ?  "  asked  Bernard.  "  I 
call  it  Britishism." 

"  Irreconcilable  still,"  laughed  Willoughby. 

"  Don't  let's  talk  politics,"  said  Bernard.  "  I'm  about 
fed  up  with  things  in  general,  and  it  does  me  good  to  see 
you." 

They  h?d  a  pleasant  three  days  together.  They  talked 
over  old  times  and  recalled  old  dreams  they  had  once  held 
in  common.  They  talked  of  the  dead :  of  Eugene  and  Mur- 
ray. 

"  I   got  some   nice   letters  of  condolence  from   Ashbury 


478  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

after  Eugene's  death.  Father  Bumpleigh  told  me  he  was 
one  of  those  Irishmen  who  had  died  to  make  England  great, 
and  there  were  others  nearly  as  bad.  The  Chronicle  said 
he  had  died  as  an  Englishman  should." 

"  Lack  of  imagination,  I'm  afraid,  is  characteristic  of  our 
people,"  said  Willoughby.  "  It  looks  as  if  it's  gradually 
losing  us  the  friendship  of  Ireland." 

"  You  had  Ireland  as  an  ally,  much  to  my  disgust,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  but  that  didn't  content  you.  You 
must  have  her  as  a  subject  or  not  at  all,  so  it  looks  as  if 
you're  going  to  lose  her  altogether." 

"  The  average  Englishman  can't  conceive  of  the  Irish  as 
distinct  allies.  He  can  only  conceive  of  them  as  rebels  and 
traitors  on  the  one  hand,  or  else  as  ceasing  to  be  Irish  and 
becoming  British." 

"  Exactly,"  said  Bernard.  "  That's  why  all'ance  between 
us  is  impossible.  .  .  .  Can  you  imagine  Stephen  and  Hek- 
tor  and  me  being  '  loyal '  to  Sherringham,  Lashworthy  and 
Co.?  What  have  we  in  common?  Oh,  Willoughby,  when 
will  you  and  the  decent  crowd  in  England  step  in  and  stop 
this  perpetual  waste  of  Ireland?  How  long  is  our  genius 
going  to  be  stifled  under  your  dead  weight?  Look  at  my 
friends.  Look  at  Hektor,  condemned  to  play  at  soldiering 
when  in  any  other  country  he'd  be  a  great  strategist.  Look 
at  O'Dwyer,  who  in  any  other  country  would  be  a  successful 
author,  wearing  his  soul  out  with  useless  hatred.  Look  at 
Stephen,  a  philosophic  statesman  of  world-wide  ideas,  con- 
demned to  hold  a  second-rate  position  in  an  insignificant 
faction.  Look  at  myself,  wasted  and  wearing  out  like  the 
rest.  Why  the  devil  do  you  let  Sherringham  and  Co.  stand 
between  you  and  me?  " 

Willoughby  had  no  answer,  and  Bernard  dropped  the  sub- 
ject to  talk  of  other  things. 

"  How's  your  sister-in-law  ?  "  he  asked  later.  Somehow 
he  found  a  difficulty  about  uttering  her  name. 

"  Janet  ?  Oh,  she's  quite  well.  She's  working  in  a  home 
for  blinded  soldiers  at  present." 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  479 

The  days  slipped  by  all  too  rapidly.  The  third  night 
they  sat  up  over  whiskey  and  pipes  till  quite  late  in  spite  of 
the  early  train  Willoughby  had  to  catch. 

"  If  all  the  men  who  love  Irish  whiskey  loved  Ireland 
she'd  be  free  tomorrow,"  said  Willoughby.  "  Here's  Eerin 
go  brar !  The  land  of  good  drink  and  sound  logic." 

Bernard  switched  off  the  light  and  watched  the  fire-glow 
playing  on  Willoughby's  honest,  rugged  features  as  he  told 
tales  of  the  trenches:  tales  of  horror  and  humour;  tales  of 
sublime  heroism  and  bestial  cruelty;  tales  of  the  endurance 
and  self-sacrifice  of  common  men.  Willoughby's  eyes  and 
voice  expressed  far  better  than  his  halting  and  limited  words 
the  love  and  admiration  he  felt  for  the  little  Cockney  war- 
riors he  commanded. 

"  By  Jove,"  he  said,  "  if  you  saw  them  in  action.  Brave 
as  lions,  Bernard.  .  .  .  No,  that's  a  silly  phrase  of  poets 
and  journalists  and  means  nothing.  Terriers  fits  them  bet- 
ter. .  .  .  And  then  when  it's  all  over,  their  kindness  to  one 
another.  I've  seen  a  foul-mouthed  little  beast  tending  to 
a  wounded  comrade  as  gently  as  a  woman.  .  .  .  And  they 
take  everything  so  philosophically,  and  joke  through  it  all. 
.  .  .  My  little  counter-jumpers  and  costers  are  made  of  bet- 
ter stuff  than  the  old  knight  errants,  I  tell  you.  .  .  .  No. 
They've  no  hatred  of  the  Germans  in  spite  of  all  the  news- 
papers. They're  decent,  cynical  little  beggars  .  .  . 

"  I  wish  our  nations  could  be  friends,  Bernard.  We 
could  be,  too,  if  only  the  people  had  their  way.  .  .  .  It's 
men's  natural  instinct  to  be  friends  after  all.  Why  I've 
known  kindly  feelings  to  cross  No  Man's  Land  from  trench 
to  trench.  .  .  .  What  are  we  killing  one  another  for?  .  .  ." 

Willoughby  looked  up  and  saw  Bernard's  gaze  fixed  in- 
tently upon  him.  He  laughed  uneasily.  There  was  deep 
affection  between  these  two  men,  but  Willoughby's  English 
stolidity  and  Bernard's  Irish  shyness  forbade  the  expression 
of  it.  Bernard,  however,  with  a  foreboding  of  disaster  in 
his  mind  was  accumulating  memories.  They  sat  in  silence 
until  the  fire  died  down.  .  .  . 


48o  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Bernard  saw  his  friend  off  from  Kingstown  next  morn- 
ing, where  they  parted  on  the  deck  of  the  steamer  with  a 
handclasp  and  a  "  Good-bye  and  good  luck."  So  Willoughby 
went  his  way,  to  be  blasted  out  of  existence  a  few  days  later 
upon  a  field  in  Picardy  .  .  . 

The  news  reached  Bernard  almost  at  once,  and  of  the 
three  blows  which  struck  him  in  so  short  a  space  this  was 
the  hardest.  Eugene's  loss  had  filled  him  with  remorse; 
thwarted  desire  had  lacerated  him  on  Mabel's  defection; 
but  Willoughby 's  death  left  him  stunned  with  a  deep  and 
abiding  sorrow. 

II 

Nobody  —  least  of  all  those  who  knew  them  best  —  un- 
derstood why  Mr.  Leeds  and  Mr.  Conachy  were  such 
friends;  for  Leeds  was  a  fanatical  and  ignorant  Republican 
while  Conachy  was  a  very  moderate  Home  Ruler ;  Leeds  was 
loud-voiced  and  ill-educated,  Conachy  intellectual  and  re- 
fined ;  and  finally  Leeds  had  been  at  tremendous  pains  to  find 
a  Gaelic  transmogrification  of  his  appalling  surname,  while 
Conachy  was  acutely  ashamed  of  the  blatant  Gaelicism  of 
his.  There  was,  however,  one  link  between  them,  and  that 
was  that  neither  ever  felt  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  act  up 
to  his  opinions.  Conachy  had  never  taken  Mr.  Redmond's 
advice  to  join  the  British  Army,  and  Leeds  was  not  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Irish  Volunteers. 

On  Wednesday  the  nineteenth  of  April  at  five  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon  these  two  were  having  coffee  in  a  Grafton 
Street  restaurant,  and  discussing  a  handbill  which  had  been 
given  to  them  before  entering.  At  numerous  other  tables 
the  same  handbill  was  causing  excited  discussion. 

"  Secret  orders  issued  to  military"  read  Conachy.  "  I 
wonder  what  on  earth  it  means." 

"  It  means  another  plot  by  this  bloody  gover'ment  to 
down  th'  Irish  people,"  pronounced  Leeds. 

"  By  Jove,  there's  that  fierce  rebel  O'Dwyer  over  there," 
said  Conachy.  "  Perhaps  he  can  explain  it." 

"Rebel,  didja  say?"  said  Leeds  contemptuously.     "The 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  481 

man's  a  bloody  West-Briton.     Did  jever  hear  th'  accent  of 
um?     And  he  thinks  Shakespeare  a  greater  pote  than  Davis." 

Conachy  paid  no  attention  to  this  harangue  but  waved 
his  hand  to  O'Dwyer,  who  was  sitting  alone  at  another  table 
waiting  to  be  served. 

"  Won't  you  sit  down  with  us?  "  said  Conachy  as  O'Dwyer 
approached.  "  We  want  your  opinion  of  this  secret  order." 

"What  secret  order?"  asked  O'Dwyer. 

"Haven't  you  seen  it?  It's  issued  as  a  handbill  from 
your  Headquarters." 

"  I'm  only  just  back  from  organizing  in  the  country," 
said  O'Dwyer. 

"Well,  what  do  you  make  of  that?  "  said  Conachy,  and 
handed  over  the  document. 

O'Dwyer  took  it  and  read  it  over,  with  knitted  brows. 

The  following  precautionary  measures  have  been  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Irish  Office  on  the  recommendation  of  the 
General  Officer  Commanding  the  Forces  in  Ireland.'  Hm.r 
'  All  preparations  will  be  made  to  put  these  measures  in 
force  immediately  on  receipt  of  an  Order  issued  from  the 
Chief  Secretary's  Office.'  Hm.  '  First,  the  following  per- 
sons to  be  placed  under  arrest:  All  members  of  the  Sinn 
Fein  National  Council,  the  Central  Executive  Irish  Sinn 
Fein  Volunteers,  Executive  Committee  National  Volunteers.' 
Hello !  This  is  getting  interesting.  '  Coisde  Gnotha  Com- 
mittee Gaelic  League.'  By  Jove!  'See  list  A  3  and  4 
and  supplementary  list  A  2.'  I  wonder  what  A  i  contains, 
and  why  should  A  2  be  supplementary  to  3  and  4.  ... 
However.  '  Police  will  be  confined  to  barracks.'  Hm. 
'  An  order  will  be  issued  to  inhabitants  of  city  to  remain 
in  their  houses.'  Devilish  exciting!  '  Pickets  will  be  placed 
at  all  points  marked  on  maps  3  and  4.  Accompanying 
mounted  patrols  will  continuously  visit  all  points  and  report 
every  hour.'  What  sort  of  donkey  drew  up  this,  I  wonder? 
'  The  following  premises  will  be  occupied  by  adequate  forces.' 
Hm.  Adequate  forces?" 

He  went  on  reading  intently  in  silence. 


482  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"Well,  what  do  you  make  of  it?"  asked  Conachy,  but 
O'Dwyer  paid  no  heed. 

An  attendant  brought  O'Dwyer  coffee  and  biscuits. 

"What?  No  sugar  ?"  he  exclaimed.  "  You  might  bring 
me  some  saccharine." 

"  It'll  make  syrup  of  your  coffee,"  said  Conachy. 

There  was  a  cry  of  "  Stop  Press  "  in  the  street  outside, 
whereupon  Leeds  rushed  out  and  presently  returned  with  a 
paper. 

"  The  military  say  it's  all  a  fabrication,"  he  announced. 
"  Just  what  they  would  say." 

"  They  happen  to  be  telling  the  truth  this  time,"  said 
O'Dwyer. 

"  What!  "  cried  Leeds.  "  Wouldja  take  the  word  of  the 
garrison  against  the  word  of  yer  own  Executive  ?  " 

"  I  take  nobody's  word  for  anything,"  replied  O'Dwyer 
calmly.  "  I'm  going  by  internal  evidence." 

"  The  Higher  Criticism,"  said  Conachy.  "  But  who's 
the  fabricator  ?  " 

"  I  reserve  my  opinion  on  that  point,  but  you  may  take 
it  from  me  no  pogrom  is  intended." 

"  Well  you're  a  nice  sort  o'  Volunteer,"  said  Leeds. 

"  Doubtless,"  said  O'Dwyer.  "  Well,  Conachy,  I'm 
afraid  I  must  rush  away.  .  .  .  Oh,  damn !  "  This  exclama- 
tion was  caused  by  his  having  tried  to  drink  off  his  coffee 
and  scalded  himself  in  the  process.  He  caught  up  his  hat 
and  vanished. 

"  Well,  I'm  jiggered,"  said  Conachy.  "  He's  grabbed  the 
hand-bill." 

O'Dwyer  hurried  down  Grafton  Street,  caught  a  north- 
going  tram  at  College  Green,  and  arrived  in  ten  minutes 
at  the  Neptune  Hotel  in  a  state  of  breathless  excitement. 
Stephen  was  out,  but  he  found  Hektor  and  McGurk  waiting 
for  tea  in  the  coffee-room,  and  dragged  them  in  spite  of  their 
protests  up  to  the  former's  bedroom. 

"  Where  did  the  original  of  that  order  come  from  ?  "  he 
asked  at  once. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  483 

"  From  the  secret  service,"  said  Hektor. 

"  Who  runs  the  secret  service  ?  " 

"  Chap  called  Moran." 

"  What  sort  of  dope  has  he  ?  " 

"  He's  rather  a  dark  horse  as  far  as  I  know,  but  he's  a 
personal  friend  of  Austin  Mallow's." 

"  That's  done  it  then." 

"Why?    What 'sup?" 

"  Couldn't  you  see  that  the  whole  thing's  a  forgery  ?  " 

"  It  seems  all  right  to  me." 

"  Good  lord,  Hektor,  you're  a  soldier,  and  yet  you  think 
that  document  was  drawn  up  by  a  military  man!  I'm 
ashamed  of  you.  Look  here.  Read  the  thing." 

He  thrust  the  paper  into  Hektor's  hand. 

"  I  served  in  an  O.T.C.  at  school,"  he  went  on,  "  so  I 
know  how  orders  are  drafted.  That's  no  military  order. 
It  applies  to  no  one  in  particular.  In  what  earthly  way 
could  any  one  obey  the  thing?  You  know  how  explicit 
military  orders  are.  Now  look  at  that.  '  Pickets  will  be 
placed.  .  .  .  Patrols  will  report.  .  .  .  Adequate  forces  will 
occupy.  .  .  .'  Delightfully  vague,  isn't  it.  It's  intended 
for  the  public,  not  for  soldiers,  and  it's  been  drawn  up,  not 
by  a  soldier,  but  by  a  civilian  with  a  smattering  of  military 
knowledge." 

"  Glory  be!  "  exclaimed  McGurk. 

"  You're  damn  well  right,  O'Dwyer,"  said  Hektor. 
"  What  a  set  of  mugs  we've  been." 

"  The  thing's  a  forgery  on  the  face  of  it,"  said  O'Dwyer. 
"  Look  at  all  these  lists  and  maps  they  refer  to:  A  3  and  4, 
and  no  A  i.  Maps  3  and  4,  and  no  I  and  2.  That  shows 
your  amateur  forger  trying  to  be  too  clever.  Then  do  you 
notice  the  list  of  premises  to  be  seized?  All  the  Volunteer 
premises  are  marked  by  name  and  number,  but  they've  been 
content  to  say  vaguely:  '  All  National  Volunteer  premises.' 
What  does  that  show?  The  authorities  would  surely  put 
down  the  numbers  in  both  cases,  so  we  can  only  assume  that 
this  was  drawn  up  by  one  of  our  people  who  was  too  lazy 


484  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

to  look  up  the  necessary  details  about  the  other  movements." 

"  Me  dear  Holmes!  "  said  McGurk. 

"  Perfectly  simple,  my  dear  Watson,"  said  O'Dwyer. 
"  Now  look  right  at  the  end  and  you'll  see  that  in  addition 
to  the  houses  named  they're  to  seize  '  all  premises  in  list 
5  D.'  More  amateur  cleverness.  Surely  if  they  had  such 
a  list  as  5  D  it's  the  notorious  houses  that  would  be  on  it, 
and  any  others  that  they  thought  of  would  be  mentioned 
separately?  " 

"  Quite  true,"  said  Hektor.  "  And  I  thought  myself  that 
they'd  scarcely  be  such  fools  as  to  occupy  the  Archbishop's 
House." 

"  That  alone  is  enough  to  indicate  forgery.  They've  laid 
it  on  just  a  little  too  thick." 

"  But  what's  th'  idea?  "  asked  McGurk. 

"  It's  an  attempt  to  bring  the  whole  country  out  in  rebel- 
lion," said  O'Dwyer.  "  They  probably  intend  to  strike  at 
once  and  they  hope  to  get  people  on  their  side  by  faking 
up  a  government  pogrom  against  the  whole  national  move- 
ment." 

"  The  bloody  grafters!  "  ejaculated  McGurk. 

"Where's  Stephen?"  asked  O'Dwyer.  "We  haven't 
a  minute  to  waste.  They  wouldn't  have  produced  this  thing 
unless  they  were  going  to  take  immediate  action." 

' '  Seven  Spears  in  the  Day  of  Light,'  "  quoted  Hektor. 

"  My  God !  "  interrupted  O'Dwyer.  **  What  a  fool  I  was 
not  to  see  it  before.  '  The  Day  of  Light '  means  Easter 
Sunday." 

"  Begob !  "  cried  McGurk.     "  The  manoeuvres !  " 

Orders  had  been  issued  the  previous  week  for  the  holding 
of  reviews  and  manoeuvres  by  the  Irish  Volunteer  forces 
over  the  whole  of  Ireland,  and  it  would  be  a  simple  matter 
for  the  agents  of  the  conspirators  to  transfer  the  manoeuvres 
to  reality.  The  only  course  open  now  to  the  peace  party 
would  be  a  public  announcement,  but  this  was  impossible 
owing  to  the  fact  that  it  would  inevitably  result  in  Govern- 
ment intervention  and  perhaps  produce  a  Government  offen- 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  485 

sive  which  would  be  quite  as  undesirable  as  the  rebellion 
they  wished  to  prevent.  They  were  therefore  constrained 
to  a  slow  and  secret  course  of  action  at  a  moment  when  time 
meant  everything.  Hektor,  plain,  blunt  soldier  as  he  was, 
felt  completely  at  sea;  so  did  McGurk;  O'Dwyer  on  the 
other  hand  had  already  begun  evolving  schemes  with  light- 
ning rapidity,  each  more  complicated  and  futile  than  the  last. 

"  We're  in  the  soup,"  he  groaned.  "  They've  had  six 
months  to  conspire  in.  How  are  we  going  to  undo  it  all  in 
three  days?  I  wish  to  the  devil  Stephen  was  here." 

The  mention  of  Stephen's  name  relaxed  the  tension  at 
once.  All  had  implicit  faith  in  his  cold,  calculating  intelli- 
gence, and  at  that  very  moment  they  thought  they  heard  his 
step  outside  the  door.  But  it  was  only  Umpleby.  He 
knocked  and  was  told  impatiently  to  enter. 

"  Hello!  "  he  said.     "  I'm  looking  for  Stephen  Ward." 

"  He's  out,"  said  McGurk.     "  Wouldn't  we  do?  " 

"  Well,  I  came  to  find  out  his  opinion  about  this  exceed- 
ingly disturbing  document "  (holding  out  a  copy  of  the 
handbill).  "  I've  just  written  letters  to  the  editors  of  the 
Daily  News  and  the  Manchester  Guardian,  but  I'm  afraid 
we  may  find  a  sanguinary  pogrom  in  progress  before  they 
can  publish  them." 

"  Arrah,  be  aisy  now,"  said  McGurk. 

"  I'm  not  at  all  easy,  my  dear  fellow.  I  take  this  matter 
seriously.  Never  in  the  whole  course  of  our  country's  trag- 
ical history;  not  even  in  the  worst  days  of  Mountjoy  and 
Carew;  not  even  in  the  sanguinary  and  sordid  transactions 
before  the  Union;  has  such  a  dastardly-  and  .  .  ." 

"  Hould  on,"  interrupted  McGurk.  "  Tell  him  the  sad 
reality,  Hektor." 

The  revelation  made  Umpleby  gape.  His  parenthetic 
fulminations  were  terrible  to  hear,  but  it  was  hard  to  say 
whether  the  impending  fate  of  his  country  or  the  slight 
inflicted  on  his  vanity  by  the  neglect  of  the  rebel  leaders  to 
consult  him  were  the  more  potent  influence. 

"  This,"  he  said,   "  is  the  most  high-handed,  calculated, 


486  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

insolent,  treacherous  piece  of  cynical,  audacious  double-deal- 
ing and  jerrymandering  that  it  has  been  my  lot  to  be  the 
innocent,  duped,  and  deluded  victim  of.  I  shall  write  a 
letter  immediately  to  the  Irish  Independent" 

"  Holy  Moses!  "  exclaimed  McGurk. 

"  I'm  afraid  you'll  have  to  restrain  your  epistolary  ac- 
tivities," said  O'Dwyer.  "  We  don't  want  to  drag  the  Gov- 
ernment into  the  business,  you  know." 

"But  what's  to  be  done?"  asked  Umpleby,  very  much 
dashed. 

"  Search  me,"  said  Hektor.  "  We're  waiting  for  Ward. 
Meanwhile,  let  us  eat,  drink  and  be  merry,  for  tomorrow 
we  may  be  arrested.  I  think  I  heard  the  gong  .  .  ." 

"  The  worst  of  it  is,"  said  O'Dwyer,  "  I've  seats  booked 
for  the  Gondoliers  on  Tuesday  —  for  two  .  .  ." 

When  Bernard  saw  the  "  Military  Order  "  he  doubted  its 
authenticity  at  once  on  the  same  grounds  as  O'Dwyer  did, 
a  talk  with  whom  confirmed  his  opinion.  He  went  up  to 
Malone's  flat  to  discuss  the  matter  with  him  and  found  him 
jubilant. 

"  There'll  have  to  be  a  fight  now,"  he  said. 

Bernard  expressed  his  opinion  of  the  Order. 

"Nonsense!"  said  Malone.  "It's  what  I've  been  ex- 
pecting for  the  last  month.  I  hope  the  Volunteers  are  ready 
for  a  scrap." 

They  argued  for  a  long  time  but  to  no  effect.  Malone 
positively  revelled  in  delight  at  the  coming  battle. 

"  All  the  world  will  know  now,"  he  said,  "  that  Ireland 
hasn't  surrendered.  Whether  we  live  or  die  the  rottenest 
page  in  our  history  is  going  to  be  turned  over  for  good. 
Get  your  gun  out,  my  lad." 

He  produced  a  neat  little  magazine  rifle  from  a  cupboard 
and  critically  examined  the  breech. 


On  Thursday  night  Bernard  sat  at  home  sorting  some  of 
Eugene's  papers  which  had  been   entrusted  to  him  by  his 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  487 

mother.  He  realized  now  how  little  he  had  known  of  Eu- 
gene's inner  life,  of  his  ideals,  emotions  and  ambitions. 
Having  persistently  underrated  his  brother's  abilities  he  had 
been  inclined  to  regard  them  as  negligible,  but  these  papers 
undeceived  him.  There  were  poems  amongst  them:  reli- 
gious and  nature  poems  mostly,  lacking  in  high  inspiration 
but  simple  and  sincere  expressions  of  genuine  emotion. 
There  were  three  articles  which  he  had  sent  in  to  different 
papers  and  which  had  evidently  been  rejected:  all  on  the 
subject  of  the  Dublin  slums,  honestly  indignant,  but  senti- 
mental rather  than  intellectual.  There  was  an  essay  on  the 
causes  of  the  war,  commonplace  and  platitudinous,  but 
quite  transparently  an  expression  of  opinions  honestly  held. 
And  finally  there  was  the  rough  draft  of  a  scheme  for  the 
foundation  of  a  society  and  a  journal  for  the  spreading  of 
Irish  ideas  in  Trinity  College. 

While  he  was  engaged  on  this  melancholy  task  he  heard 
a  ring  at  the  hall-door  and  looking  up  saw  that  it  was  after 
ten  o'clock.  His  house-keeper  he  knew  would  be  in  bed, 
so  he  went  out  and  opened  the  door  himself.  He  was 
surprised  to  see  Brian  Mallow  standing  on  the  steps  out- 
side. 

"Mum's  the  word!"  whispered  Brian,  and  stepped  into 
the  hall  with  a  darkly  conspiratorial  air.  "  Will  you  take 
me  where  we  can't  be  overheard  ?  " 

Bernard  conducted  him  to  the  sitting-room,  gave  him  a 
chair  by  the  fire,  and  returned  to  his  seat  at  the  table. 

"  Well,  what's  the  mystery?  "  he  asked. 

"  The  greatest  thing  going,"  replied  Brian.  "  The  Re- 
public's going  to  be  proclaimed  on  Sunday." 

"  What !  "  exclaimed  Bernard.  He  was  startled  out  of 
his  self-control,  but  Brian  thought  he  was  merely  excited. 
Bernard  restrained  himself  forthwith  and  determined  to  hear 
everything. 

"  Yes,"  went  on  Brian.  "  There's  to  be  a  rising  all  over 
Ireland  at  midday  on  Sunday,  fifty  thousand  Germans  are 
to  land  in  Kerry,  and  the  German  fleet  is  going  to  sally  out 


488  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  attack  England.  I  got  you  the  job  of  taking  command 
in  Kerry  to  receive  the  Germans." 

"  Oh.     And  when  was  all  this  decided  on  ?  " 

"  At  a  special  meeting  of  the  Executive  last  night." 

"  I  never  heard  of  such  a  meeting.  Ward  and  O'Flah- 
erty  were  dining  with  me  last  night." 

"  We're  not  telling  them.  They're  afraid  to  rebel  and 
they'd  only  try  and  interfere  if  they  knew.  They'll  come 
in  all  right  when  it's  on." 

"  Does  MacNeill  know?  " 

"  Oh,  lord  no.     He'd  interfere  too  if  he  did." 

"  Well,  he'll  know  from  me  then." 

Brian  began  to  look  anxious. 

"  You  mustn't  tell  any  one  or  you'll  spoil  everything,"  he 
said.  "  Look  here.  All  this  was  between  ourselves." 

"  Pity  you  didn't  mention  that  before,"  said  Bernard. 
"  I  say,  you  don't  mind  my  putting  you  out,  do  you?  I'm 
going  to  see  MacNeill."  x 

"  No  you  don't,"  said  Brian  and,  whipping  out  a  revolver, 
he  pointed  it  at  Bernard's  head.  "  Hands  up!  "  he  cried. 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Bernard  calmly,  and  proceeded  to  fill 
his  pipe.  "  You  know  very  well  you  wouldn't  dare  fire. 
Don't  be  theatrical." 

"  Hands  up,"  reiterated  Brian. 

Bernard  struck  a  match  and  carefully  lit  his  pipe.  Speak- 
ing between  the  puffs  he  said : 

"  I  wish  you'd  .  .  .  put  that  thing  .  .  .  down.  It  might 
go  off." 

"  You're  not  going  to  leave  this  room,"  said  Brian,  "  if 
I  have  to  spend  the  whole  night  with  you." 

"  Indeed  ?  "  said  Bernard. 

Brian  was  standing  up  with  levelled  revolver,  and  the 
table  was  between  them.  With  a  sudden  jerk  Bernard  drove 
the  table  hard  against  Brian,  who,  taken  unawares,  stag- 
gered back,  tripped,  and  fell,  striking  his  head  on  the  fender. 
His  revolver  dropped  on  the  floor  and  Bernard  hastened  to 
seize  it. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  489 

"  Damn  you,  Lascelles,"  said  Brian,  sitting  up  and  finger- 
ing the  bump  on  his  occiput. 

Bernard  unloaded  the  revolver,  put  the  cartridges  in  his 
pocket,  and  tossed  the  weapon  back  to  its  owner. 

"  Woe  betide  you  if  you  give  us  away,"  muttered  Brian. 

"  I'm  sorry  for  my  apparent  inhospitality,"  said  Bernard, 
"  but  I  really  must  be  going.  You  can  follow  at  your  lei- 
sure. Close  the  door  when  you're  leaving,  by  the  way." 

"  And  you're  the  man  I  converted,"  said  Brian.  "  I  wish 
to  hell  I'd  let  you  remain  a  Unionist  .  .  . 

"  What'll  Austin  say?"  he  ruefully  asked  himself  when 
Bernard  was  gone.  He  consoled  himself  by  reflecting  that 
things  had  gone  too  far  to  be  stopped.  Those  fifty  thousand 
Germans  would  be  enough  to  ensure  action. 

"  All  the  same,"  he  said  as  he  left  the  flat,  "  I'll  get  it 
in  the  neck  from  Austin.  .  .  .  Good  lord,  what'll  he 
say?" 

Meanwhile  Bernard  had  taken  out  his  car  and  run  over 
to  O'Dwyer's  lodgings.  He  was  out,  the  landlady  said. 
Two  gentlemen  had  called  for  him  in  a  taxi  about  an  hour 
ago.  Bernard  thereupon  turned  and  hastened  across  town 
to  the  Neptune  Hotel.  He  found  McGurk  in  the  smoking- 
room. 

"  Where's  Stephen  ?  "  he  asked. 

"Oh,  is  that  you,  Bernard?"  cried  McGurk,  springing 
up  from  the  arm-chair  in  which  he  had  been  lounging. 
"  Have  ye  heard  the  news?  The  fat's  in  the  fire  at  last. 
Stephen  and  Hektor  are  gone  to  MacNeill's.  There  was  a 
fella  came  in  her  a  couple  of  hours  ago  who'd  been  in  with 
the  dopers  and  got  cold  feet.  There's  to  be  guns  landed  in 
Kerry  and  a  rising  on  Sunday,  and  .  .  ." 

"  Are  there  German  troops  coming?  " 

"  Divil  a  troop." 

"  I  thought  as  much."  He  told  McGurk  about  the  Brian 
Mallow  episode. 

"  Oh,  there's  to  be  no  Germans,"  said  McGurk.  "  Our 
man  said  so,  and  he  ought  to  know,  for  he  was  thick  as 


490  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

thieves  with  them.  Sure  if  there  was,  wouldn't  we  all  be 
in  it  ?  " 

"  And  what  are  our  people  going  to  do?  " 

"  They'll  be  holding  a  palaver  at  present.  Hektor  swears 
he'll  put  lead  in  Mallow.  I  hope  they'll  shoot  the  whole 
bloody  bunch." 

"  Then  there's  nothing  I  can  do?  " 

"  The  best  thing  you  can  do  is  to  go  home  where  they  can 
find  you  if  they  want  you.  Stephen  told  me  not  to  stir  from 
here." 

Instead  of  going  straight  home,  however,  Bernard  made 
for  Mallow's  house.  He  was  in  a  most  uneasy  frame  of 
mind,  foreseeing  nothing  in  the  contemplated  rebellion  but 
the  smashing  of  the  Volunteer  movement  and  the  loss  to 
the  nation  of  its  sole  defence  against  conscription  and  its 
hope  of  freedom.  Arriving  at  the  house  at  Rathgar,  as 
soon  as  he  was  admitted  he  pushed  past  the  servant  and 
opened  the  sitting-room  door.  Austin  Mallow  and  another 
insurrectionary  member  of  the  Executive  named  Barret  were 
sitting  at  the  table  poring  over  a  map. 

"  Oh,  it's  you,  is  it  ?  "  said  Austin. 

"  Yes,"  said  Bernard,  breathing  hard.  He  expected  a  vio- 
lent tirade  from  Austin,  but  the  poet  merely  said : 

"  I'm  glad  you  came.     Sit  down." 

"  I  want  to  know  the  meaning  of  all  this  high-handed 
trickery,"  said  Bernard,  still  standing. 

"  Certainly,"  said  Austin.  "  Our  methods  are  not  quite 
what  we'd  like  ourselves,  but  .  .  .  under  certain  condi- 
tions. .  .  ."  He  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

Bernard  took  a  chair  at  the  foot  of  the  table. 

"  Do  you  seriously  expect  to  beat  the  British  Army?  "  he 
asked. 

"  We  do,"  said  Austin. 

Bernard  uttered  an  exclamation  of  derision,  and  Barret 
interposed. 

"  You  don't  understand,"  he  said.     "  We  don't  expect  to 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  491 

win  in  a  military  sense,  but  we  are  confident  of  a  moral  vic- 
tory." 

"  Hmph !  "  ejaculated  Bernard. 

"  I  appreciate  your  feelings,"  said  Barret.  "  You  and 
your  friends  are  extremely  clever  young  men,  and  all  the 
force  of  reason  and  common  sense  is  on  your  side.  But  .  .  ." 

He  paused,  as  if  not  ready  to  speak  all  that  was  in  his 
mind. 

"Well?  "said  Bernard. 

"  Reason  and  common  sense  are  not  enough.  You  have 
no  vision.  You  are  blind  to  the  spiritual  essentials.  You 
will  organize  and  drill  and  discipline  your  men  for  ever,  but 
you'll  never  do  anything  decisive,  because  reason  and  com- 
mon sense  are  always  on  the  side  of  the  big  battalions.  We 
see  beyond  these  petty  things.  We  see  beyond  failure  and 
death  to  the  victory  which  failure  and  death  will  achieve. 
Failure  and  death  will  be  the  voice  by  which  we  shall  speak, 
first  to  our  own  people,  and  then  to  all  the  peoples  of  the 
world,  and  by  our  failure  and  death  we  shall  forge  a  weapon 
which  those  who  scoff  at  us  now  will  afterwards  use  .  .  ." 

"  You  may  be  right,"  said  Bernard.  "  Personally  I  think 
you're  wrong,  but  I  won't  argue  that.  But  however  right 
you  may  be  you  can't  justify  your  acting  against  the  will  of 
the  majority  of  the  Executive  or  the  way  in  which  you  have 
deceived  us."  He  addressed  himself  to  Barret,  feeling  it 
useless  to  argue  with  his  fanatical  companion.  Barret  hesi- 
tated at  this,  however,  and  Austin  broke  in: 

"  Do  you  think  that  when  we've  decided  what  must  be 
done  we're  going  to  be  held  back  by  considerations  of  that 
sort?  Do  you  think  that  we're  going  to  place  the  feelings 
of  our  colleagues  or  even  of  our  own  personal  honour  above 
the  interests  of  Ireland?  Do  you  think  that  we'll  allow 
ourselves  to  be  thwarted  by  your  timidity  and  lack  of  enter- 
prise? No,  thank  you.  Ireland  must  be  saved  in  spite 
of  the  strength  of  her  enemies  and  the  weakness  of  her 
friends." 


492  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Bernard  paid  no  attention  to  this  harangue  but  continued 
to  address  himself  to  Barret. 

"  It  isn't  fair  to  the  men,"  he  said.  "  They  joined  the 
movement  in  the  belief  that  if  there  was  to  be  a  fight  it 
wouldn't  be  a  hopeless  one.  To  lead  them  out  to  what  even 
you  admit  to  be  certain  defeat  is  the  grossest  treachery  to 
them." 

"  The  men  will  endorse  our  action  afterwards,"  said  Bar- 
ret. 

"  All  Ireland  will  endorse  it  eventually,"  said  Austin. 
"  And  just  mark  my  words.  Our  minds  are  made  up.  The 
fight  is  bound  to  be  fought.  And  any  one  who  interferes 
with  us  from  this  out  will  be  crushed.  Ireland  has  been 
ruined  by  faint  hearts  too  often.  We  shall  see  that  it  doesn't 
occur  again.  .  .  .  That's  a  warning  to  you  .  .  ." 

"  Hmph!  Very  dramatic  I'm  sure,"  said  Bernard.  "But 
don't  you  imagine  that  you're  the  only  people  who  can  play 
the  crushing  game  .  .  .  not  by  long  chalks.  And  don't 
think  you've  a  monopoly  of  patriotism.  For  myself  I  can 
say  that  I  prefer  Ireland  to  my  theories  about  her,  and  that's 
more  than  you  can  say." 

"  How  charming!  "  said  Mallow,  with  a  sneer  on  his  thin 
lips.  Barret  turned  to  Bernard  and  said : 

"  I've  no  doubt  whatever  that  you  are  as  much  concerned 
with  the  good  of  Ireland  as  we  are.  But  consider  this: 
nothing  can  stop  the  fight  now,  and  interference  on  your 
part  will  only  hamper  us  —  no  more.  It's  a  pity  we  cannot 
agree,  but  there  we  are." 

"  I  hold  my  view  as  strongly  as  you  hold  yours,"  said  Ber- 
nard. "  So  I'll  oppose  you  to  the  end.  .  .  .  Good  evening." 

He  rose  and  went  out. 

13 

Next  morning  Bernard  was  sitting  down  to  a  Good  Fri- 
day breakfast  —  milkless  tea,  butterless  buns,  and  a  kippered 
herring  —  when  O'Dwyer  came  in  looking  pale,  heavy-eyed 
and  exhausted. 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  493 

"Can  you  give  me  some  breakfast?"  he  asked.  "I've 
a  lot  to  tell  you  and  I'm  in  a  hurry.  .  .  .  None  of  your 
black  tea  and  buns.  I'm  starving  and  worn-out  so  I'm 
giving  myself  a  dispensation."  He  dropped  heavily  into  the 
nearest  arm-chair. 

Bernard  hurried  out  to  give  the  necessary  orders,  but  was 
back  in  a  moment  to  ask: 

"  Tea  or  coffee?  " 

There  was  no  answer.  O'Dwyer  had  fallen  asleep  in  the 
chair.  Bernard  left  him  so  until  breakfast  was  ready  and 
then  roused  him  with  difficulty. 

"  Have  I  been  asleep  ?  "  murmured  O'Dwyer.  "  Lord, 
I'm  fagged  out.  Up  all  night  and  running  all  over  the  city 
this  morning." 

Bernard  poured  out  tea  for  him  and  O'Dwyer  stumbled 
over  to  the  table.  He  drank  and  ate  a  little  and  soon  woke 
up  completely. 

"  Listen  now,"  he  said.  "  Stephen  and  Hektor  discovered 
last  night  that  there's  to  be  a  rebellion  .  .  ." 

"  I  know,"  said  Bernard.     "  McGurk  told  me." 

"  Good.  Then  I  can  skip  a  lot.  They  came  straight 
over  to  my  digs  and  fetched  Sullivan  from  his,  and  we  all 
drove  out  to  MacNeill's.  He's  drawn  up  countermanding 
orders,  and  we've  had  them  typed  and  addressed,  and  we're 
sending  them  out  by  hand  all  over  the  country.  I've  got 
about  a  dozen  here  for  you,  for  corps  scattered  over  southern 
Leinster.  You'll  take  them,  I  suppose?  .  .  .  Good.  I've 
another  set  for  Umpleby :  he's  a  sound  man  for  all  his  absurd- 
ity. McGurk's  doing  the  west,  and  I'm  going  north  this 
evening  after  I've  had  a  sleep.  .  .  .  Tea's  great  stuff,  Ber- 
nard. I  feel  a  new  man  already." 

"  I  suppose  I'd  better  start  as  soon  as  possible?  " 

"  The  sooner  the  better,"  said  O'Dwyer,  and  handed  over 
a  bundle  of  letters  .  .  . 

So  Bernard  found  himself  driving  all  that  day  over  Ossory 
and  Hy  Kinsella.  First  he  posted  straight  to  Ballylangan 
where  Crowley  —  who  was  mightily  indignant  at  the  idiocy 


494  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

and  trickery  of  the  whole  affair  —  undertook  the  delivery 
of  three  of  the  documents  whose  addresses  lived  fairly  near. 

"  What  sort  of  an  insurrection  these  fellows  expect  in 
this  neighbourhood  I  can't  make  out,"  he  said.  "  Our  corps 
are  all  small  and  only  a  quarter  of  them  armed,  and  they're 
scattered  about  all  over  the  place.  What  the  devil  we  could 
do  beats  me." 

At  shops  in  country  towns,  at  doctors'  houses,  at  farm 
houses,  at  labourers'  cottages,  at  lonely  cabins  on  the  moun- 
tains Bernard  left  his  missives,  and  the  look  of  relief  on  the 
faces  of  the  recipients  was  good  to  see.  They  were  shrewd 
fellows,  these  young  Volunteer  captains,  and  there  were  few 
that  did  not  realize  the  madness  of  the  adventure  to  which 
they  had  thought  themselves  committed.  They  would  not 
have  hesitated  a  moment  about  obeying  those  orders,  issued, 
as  they  thought,  by  the  Executive  they  had  elected  to  govern 
them,  but  the  countermanding  order  was  obviously  welcome. 
Bernard's  task  was  a  long  and  tiring  one,  and  not  much  more 
than  half  of  it  was  accomplished  by  midnight,  when  he  put 
up  at  a  village  inn  where  not  only  the  son  but  the  proprietor 
himself  were  Volunteers.  He  completed  his  round  by  the 
middle  of  the  next  day  and  hastened  back  to  Dublin. 

On  arriving  at  the  Neptune  that  evening  he  found  Hektor 
sunk  in  intense  gloom. 

"  What's  the  matter  now?  "  he  asked. 

"  We've  our  backs  to  the  wall,  sonny,"  said  Hektor. 
"  The  insurrectors  have  beaten  us  at  every  turn.  Sullivan 
and  Hobson  have  been  kidnapped  and  Stephen  escaped  by 
the  tips  of  his  eyelashes." 

"Great  Scott!  " 

"  We  had  the  insurrectors  up  to  Headquarters  and  after 
a  grand  palaver  they  withdrew  and  apologized  and  swore 
that  it  was  all  off.  The  only  thing  to  worry  about  then 
seemed  to  be  the  arms  ship  and  we  just  prayed  that  Jellicoe 
might  be  propitious  to  us.  Well,  when  all  was  squared  up 
the  dopers  took  their  departure  and  about  three  hours  later 
Stephen  was  sitting  here  alone  when  Austin  Mallow  arrived 


GATHERING  CLOUDS  495 

in  a  cab  and  asked  him  to  come  to  a  conference  at  his  place 
to  settle  up  matters  of  detail.  It  seemed  a  bit  thin  to 
Stephen,  but  he  went  down  to  the  cab,  and  if  the  fellows 
inside  hadn't  been  just  a  trifle  too  quick  on  the  draw  he 
might  have  gone  with  them.  As  it  was  he  just  smiled  and 
excused  himself.  Since  then  we've  heard  that  the  others 
have  disappeared,  but  where  they  are  we  don't  know." 

"What  does  it  all  mean,  I  wonder?" 

"  It  means  that  they're  going  to  try  and  pull  the  thing 
off  in  Dublin  anyway.  You  see  the  countermanding  orders 
have  never  reached  the  Dublin  men  as  the  four  battalion 
commandants  happen  to  be  insurrectors.  However,  Stephen's 
called  the  remainder  of  our  party  together  and  we've  sent 
in  a  notice  to  the  Sunday  papers.  Short  of  calling  round  on 
all  the  men  individually  I  don't  see  what  else  we  could  do. 
.  .  .  I'm  fair  sick  of  this  game.  I'm  a  soldier,  sir,  and  my 
career  in  that  line  has  been  persistently  interfered  with.  I 
joined  this  movement  in  a  military  capacity,  not  as  a  keeper 
in  a  criminal  lunatic  asylum;  which  seems  to  be  my  prin- 
cipal function  at  present." 

The  following  morning  on  his  way  to  Mass  Bernard 
bought  a  Sunday  paper.  Prominent  on  the  front  page  was 
the  following  notice: 

Owing  to  the  very  critical  position,  all  orders  given  to 
Irish  Volunteers  for  Easter  Sunday  are  hereby  rescinded, 
and  no  parades,  marches,  or  other  movements  of  Volunteers 
will  take  place.  Each  individual  Volunteer  will  obey  this 
order  strictly  in  every  particular. 

The  day  passed  by  uneventfully.  Bernard  spent  it  with 
his  mother,  Alice,  and  Sandy. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

CATASTROPHE 


ALL  Dublin  —  that  is  to  say  all  Dublin  that  felt  that  it 
really  counted  and  a  good  proportion  that  had  no  idea 
that  it  didn't  —  was  at  Fairyhouse  Races  on  Monday.  The 
society  papers  said  all  Dublin  was  there,  and  as  definitions 
are  valuable  to  students  and  statisticians  let  it  here  be  stated 
that  in  this  context  "  all  Dublin  "  means  and  includes  five 
peers,  six  baronets,  eleven  knights,  two  generals,  an  inde- 
terminate number  of  colonels,  captains  and  subalterns,  some 
hundreds  of  untitled  gentry,  and  some  thousands  of  the 
commonalty:  with  women  and  children  over  and  above. 
The  Earl  and  Countess  of  Ringsend  were  there,  with  their 
son  Lord  Sandymount.  Sir  Swithin  and  Lady  Mallaby 
Morchoe  were  there ;  and  Sir  Perry  and  Lady  Tifflytis ;  and 
Sir  John  and  Lady  Bonegraft  (newly  titled  and  striving  to 
appear  unconscious  of  it)  ;  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke 
were  there;  and  Sir  Eugene  Lascelles;  and  Mrs.  Harvey 
(whose  newly  acquired  son-in-law  had  evidently  been  a  sound 
investment) .  It  was  a  most  brilliant  assembly. 

The  refreshment  room  behind  the  Grand  Stand  hummed 
with  conversation  during  the  luncheon  hour. 

"  How  dowdy  Lady  Inchicore  is,"  said  Mrs.  Moffat  to 
Mrs.  Metcalfe.  "  Really,  my  dear,  if  I  were  a  Countess 
I  think  I'd  treat  myself  to  a  new  hat  now  and  then." 

"  It's  a  long  time  since  Mrs.  Harvey  appeared  in  society," 
said  Mrs.  Metcalfe.  "  Has  she  come  in  for  money?  " 

"My  dear,  haven't  you  heard?"  said  Mrs.  Moffat,  and 
proceeded  to  explain  .  .  . 

"  How  well  Sir  Eugene  bears  his  sorrow,"  said  Lady 
496 


CATASTROPHE  497 

Bonegraft  to  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke.  "  To  look  at  him  you 
wouldn't  dream  that  he'd  lost  his  son  only  a  few  months 
ago.  I  think  it's  so  brave  and  patriotic  of  him  to  be  so 
cheerful." 

Sir  Eugene  at  the  moment  was  enjoying  a  paternal  flirta- 
tion with  a  pert  little  miss  of  seventeen.  Sir  John  Bonegraft, 
who  hated  him,  interrupted  heavily,  saying: 

"  Hello,  Lascelles.     Is  that  boy  of  yours  out  of  gaol  yet?  " 

Sir  Eugene  flushed  angrily  and  said: 

"  I  know  nothing  whatever  about  him."  Whereat  Sir 
John  emitted  his  thumping  laugh  and  went  off  to  mimic  him 
to  Sir  Perry  Tifflytis  .  .  . 

A  young  man  came  into  the  refreshment  room  breathless 
with  excitement  and  blurted  out  to  the  first  person  he  saw: 

"  Heard  the  news?  .  .  .  Ructions  in  town  .  .  .  Sinn 
Feiners  out.  .  .  .  Shooting  everybody  .  .  .  The  Castle 
taken  .  .  ." 

People  pressed  round  him  eager  for  news  which,  how- 
ever, was  received  with  incredulity. 

"  A  mere  street  riot,  I'm  sure,"  said  Sir  Eugene  Lascelles. 

"  No.     They've  got  the  Castle." 

"  Disloyal  beggars!  " 

"What's  all  the  excitement?"  some  one  asks,  pressing 
into  the  circle.  The  story  is  told  again.  There  is  a  babel 
of  questions  and  comments. 

"  Sin  fainars:  what  are  they?  " 

"  But  they've  got  the  Castle  .  .  ." 

"  It's  all  nonsense." 

"  They  ought  to  be  shot." 

"  I  knew  this  would  happen." 

"  This  weak-kneed  Government!  " 

"  What  can  you  expect  with  a  man  like  Birrell?  .  .  ." 

"  German  gold,  you  may  be  sure  .  .  ." 

"...  And  in  the  middle  of  the  great  war  too!  " 

"  I  hope  they'll  all  be  shot." 

"  I'll  bet  it's  all  over  by  this  time." 

These  are  samples  of  the  more  intelligent  of  the  remarks 


498  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

which  filled  the  air.  The  excitement  lasted  for  some  ten  or 
fifteen  minutes  but  for  lack  of  definite  information  it  quickly 
subsided,  and  incredulity  took  its  place.  Interest  returned 
to  the  races  .  .  . 

The  road  was  packed  with  pedestrians  and  vehicles  when 
it  was  all  over.  The  humble  commonalty  footed  it  to  the 
station,  or  cycled,  or  crowded  in  half-dozens  on  to  outside 
cars,  while  motors  of  every  description,  from  insignificant 
little  two-seaters  to  mammoth  landaulettes,  humming,  hoot- 
ing and  screaming,  threaded  their  courses  Dublinwards 
through  this  chattering,  jangling  confusion.  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Gunby  Rourke  in  their  magnificent  Rolls  Royce  were  the 
first  to  extricate  themselves  from  the  multitude  and  hasten 
down  a  clear  road  towards  the  city,  to  their  ultimate  un- 
doing; for  at  the  end  of  a  long  suburban  road  they  came 
upon  the  outermost  of  the  barricades. 

It  was  a  ramshackle  structure:  a  makeshift  coacervation 
of  diverse  objects.  An  overturned  tramcar  made  up  nearly 
half  of  it ;  the  remainder  consisting  of  a  couple  of  motor- 
cars, half  a  dozen  bicycles,  a  few  paving  stones,  some  sand- 
bags, and  the  pillage  of  a  second-hand  furniture  shop. 
There  was  a  gap  at  one  end.  The  fortification  was  manned 
by  five  men  in  the  grey-green  uniform  of  the  Volunteers, 
and  rifles  could  be  seen  projecting  from  the  windows  of  the 
houses  that  flanked  it.  The  inhabitants  of  the  district,  re- 
spectable and  ragged,  stood  about  staring,  grumbling,  or 
cursing. 

"  Halt!  "  rang  out  the  voice  of  one  of  the  garrison,  and  as 
if  to  guarantee  the  seriousness  of  the  command  there  burst 
forth  the  sound  of  rifle-fire  from  a  distant  quarter  of  the 
city. 

"  Don't  mind  him,"  said  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke  to  her 
chauffeur,  who  had  slackened  speed.  "  Drive  for  the  gap." 

"  I'll  blow  your  brains  out  if  you  do,"  said  the  Volunteer, 
whereat  the  great  Rolls  Royce  stopped  dead. 

"What  impertinence!"  cried  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke. 
"  Drive  on,  Jennings." 


CATASTROPHE  499 

"  We'd  best  go  back,  madam,"  said  Jennings. 

"  Ye'll  do  nothing  of  the  sort,  then,"  said  the  sentry. 
"  If  ye  move  wan  inch  I'll  shoot  ye  dead." 

"  This  is  outrageous !  "  said  Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke.  "  What 
can  we  do,  Arthur?  " 

"  I'm  afraid  we  must  bow  to  the  inevitable,  dear,"  said 
Mr.  Gunby  Rourke. 

Another  Volunteer,  evidently  a  section-commander,  now 
came  out  of  one  of  the  houses  and  crossed  the  barricade. 

"  WV11  have  to  commandeer  this  car,"  he  said,  fingering 
the  handle  of  a  revolver  at  his  belt.  "  May  I  ax  ye  to  step 
out." 

Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke  was  perfectly  furious  at  this. 

"  Do  you  know  who  I  am,  sir?  "  she  demanded. 

"  Ye  may  be  the  Empress  o'  Chiney,  ma'am,  but  we've 
got  to  finish  this  barricade,  and  that  car  o'  yours'll  just 
do  it." 

Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke  was  almost  speechless  with  indigna- 
tion. She  gasped  incoherently  and  then  turned  on  her  hus- 
band, who  was  lying  back  in  his  seat  passively  smoking  a 
cigar. 

"  Are  you  going  to  sit  there  quietly  and  hear  me  in- 
sulted ?  "  she  asked. 

Mr.  Gunby  Rourke  waved  his  cigar  helplessly  and  said: 

"  What  can  one  do,  my  dear?  " 

"  Do!  "  exclaimed  his  wife,  and  became  incoherent  again. 

"  Arrah,  be  aisy,  ma'am,"  said  the  Volunteer.  "  We 
won't  do  y'anny  harm,  an'  when  the  Republic's  established 
sure  we'll  give  ye  compensation  for  the  car.  Will  ye  dis- 
mount if  ye  plaze?  " 

Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke  turned  her  outraged  eyes  to  heaven 
and  sat  still,  but  her  husband  and  the  chauffeur  alighted. 

"  Come  along,  my  dear,"  said  the  former.  "  We  nfust 
yield  to  superior  force  for  the  moment,  but  they'll  all  be 
shot  in  a  few  days." 

Mrs.  Gunby  Rourke  made  no  answer,  but  seeing  the  Vol- 
unteer lovingly  fondle  the  handle  of  his  revolver  she  de- 


500  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

scended  from  the  car  and  walked  off  on  her  husband's  arm. 
The  Rolls  Royce  was  stuffed  into  the  gap  in  the  barricade. 


A  shot  and  its  echo  sounded  in  the  far  distance.  Bernard 
dropped  the  book  he  was  reading  and  listened.  Another 
shot  rang  out  close  at  hand.  Then  silence. 

He  heard  some  one  come  down  the  stairs  at  a  run,  and  in 
a  moment  John  Malone  burst  into  the  room. 

"  Did  you  hear  it?  "  he  cried.  "  They're  suppressing  the 
Volunteers !  " 

Another  distant  shot  was  heard,  followed  by  two  others 
in  rapid  succession.  A  chill  sense  of  realization  came  to 
Bernard. 

"  It  isn't  that,"  he  said.     "  It's  rebellion." 

"  Hurroosh!  "  cried  Malone.  "  I  guess  I'm  going  for  my 
gun."  And  he  rushed  out. 

At  the  same  moment  Bernard  heard  the  tramp  of  feet  in 
the  street  outside  and,  going  to  the  window,  he  saw  a  squad 
of  men  in  green  uniforms  marching  up  the  street. 

"Foiled  again,"  he  muttered;  and  added:  ."Poor  dev- 
ils!" 

Malone  returned,  carrying  his  rifle. 

"  Aren't  you  coming?  "  he  said. 

Bernard  knew  it  would  be  useless  to  enter  into  a  discussion 
with  him,  so  he  merely  said : 

"  Not  yet.     Don't  wait  for  me." 

Malone  disappeared.  Bernard  went  out  a  few  minutes 
later.  Hurrying  down  Harcourt  Street  he  was  struck  by 
the  unnatural  quietness  everywhere.  Traffic  seemed  to  have 
been  suspended,  and  people  stood  at  their  doors  or  in  little 
groups  on  the  sidewalks,  talking  in  subdued  tones,  with 
every  now  and  again  an  anxious  glance  down  the  street 
in  the  direction  of  Stephen's  Green.  Arriving  at  the  corner 
Bernard  saw  a  little  bunch  of  people  being  hustled  out  of 
the  Park  by  some  of  the  Citizen  Army,  who,  as  soon  as  the 


CATASTROPHE  501 

last  of  the  civilians  had  been  thrust  outside,  closed  the  gate 
and  secured  it  with  a  lock  and  chain.  In  a  shrubbery  inside 
the  railings  half  a  dozen  of  the  men  in  green  were  digging 
entrenchments.  The  people  who  had  been  expelled  from 
the  Green  stood  staring  at  them,  arid  from  the  open  doors 
and  windows  of  all  the  houses  in  the  neighbourhood  the 
inhabitants  were  staring  hard.  Passers-by  in  the  street 
stopped  and  stared  in  their  turn.  There  seemed  to  be  noth- 
ing else  for  people  to  do  but  to  stare:  they  were  too  puzzled 
and  stupefied  to  talk.  An  ominous  silence  reigned  over  all, 
broken  only  by  the  clink  and  scrape  of  the  tools  of  the 
trench  diggers  and  the  occasional  pop  of  a  distant  rifle. 

Bernard  had  no  time  to  stop  and  stare.  He  walked  on 
along  the  east  side  of  the  square  until  he  reached  Grafton 
Street,  where  he  stopped  abruptly  on  seeing  a  section  of  his 
own  company  marching  towards  him.  Bernard  succeeded 
in  catching  the  commander's  eye  and  raised  his  hand,  where- 
upon the  latter  halted  his  men,  came  over  to  Bernard,  saluted, 
and  stood  to  attention. 

"How's  this,  Muldoon?"  asked  Bernard.  "How  did 
you  come  to  be  mobilized  without  me  ?  " 

"  Captain  Skehan  mobilized  us,  sir,"  replied  Muldoon. 

"  Captain  Skehan  ?  "  queried  Bernard. 

"  Yes,  sir.  He  showed  us  his  promotion  order  signed  by 
Commandant-General  Pearse.  ...  I  thought  you'd  been 
promoted  to  the  Staff  maybe,  Captain." 

"  Not  exactly,  Muldoon,"  said  Bernard.  "  In  fact  I 
rather  fancy  I've  been  cashiered." 

"  I'm  sorry  to  hear  that,  Captain." 

"  This  rebellion  isn't  an  Executive  affair  at  all,  you  know. 
It's  mutiny  against  the  President  as  a  matter  of  fact.  The 
whole  thing's  a  frightful  mix  up  and  there's  no  time  to 
explain  it.  I'm  going  down  to  Headquarters  now  to  see 
what  can  be  done.  Meanwhile,  what'll  you  do?  " 

"  I  suppose  I'll  have  to  carry  out  me  orders,  Captain. 
But  between  ourselves  I  don't  know  what  we're  out  for. 
We'll  be  bet  for  certain." 


502  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Something  may  be  done  yet.  Where  are  Headquarters, 
by  the  way?  " 

"  At  the  G.P.O.,  Captain." 

"  Very  well.  I  suppose  you'd  better  carry  on  for  the 
present." 

Muldoon  saluted  and  returned  to  his  men.  Bernard  re- 
sumed his  way,  passed  down  Grafton  Street  and  W^estmore- 
land  Street,  and  arriving  at  O'Connell  Bridge  ran  into 
Stephen  and  Hektor. 

"  Well,"  said  Stephen.  "  What  do  you  think  of  this  piece 
of  lunacy  ?  " 

"  Can  nothing  be  done  ?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  Look,"  said  Stephen,  and  pointed  down  Sackville  Street. 
The  Republican  Tricolour  of  Orange,  White  and  Green 
was  flying  from  the  roof  of  the  General  Post  Office. 

"  There's  been  a  scrap  already,"  said  Hektor.  "  A  party 
of  Lancers  went  down  the  street  about  ten  minutes  ago  and 
were  fired  on.  Three  were  killed." 

"  Nothing  can  stop  it  now,"  said  Stephen. 

There  was  a  burst  of  firing  far  away  on  the  south  side  of 
the  city. 

"  Attack  on  Portobello  Barracks,  I  suppose,"  suggested 
Hektor. 

Excited  groups  of  people  were  standing  about,  on  and  near 
the  bridge  discussing  the  situation.  Stray  words  from  some 
of  them  reached  Bernard's  ears:  "  Bloody  fools!  "  "What 
the  hell  do  they  think  they're  up  to?  "  "  I  hope  they'll  all 
be  shot." 

"  The  Republic  doesn't  seem  to  be  exactly  popular/'  ob- 
served Hektor.  "  Physical  force  won't  have  much  stock  in 
the  country  when  the  dust  up  is  over." 

"  I  hope  to  heaven  the  country'll  keep  quiet,"  said  Stephen. 
"  How  do  things  look  where  you  were?  " 

"  They  didn't  seem  at  all  anxious  to  come  out,"  replied 
Bernard. 

"  I  bet  they  won't  like  abandoning  Dublin,"  said  Hek- 
tor. 


CATASTROPHE  503 

"  Well,  let's  hope  they'll  have  the  sense  to  do  it  all  the 
same,"  said  Stephen. 

"  I  don't  know  that  sense  is  everything,"  said  Bernard. 
He  was  looking  at  the  flag  of  Ireland  flying  in  the  breeze, 
and  a  longing  seized  him  to  fight  and  die  in  its  defence. 
A  thousand  emotions  were  welling  up  in  his  heart.  The 
spirit  of  the  rebels  of  all  the  ages  was  calling  to  him;  the 
music  of  Ireland  was  playing  to  him;  the  anger  of  Ireland 
was  thrilling  him ;  reason  was  being  swamped  in  floods  of  pas- 
sion. Stephen,  reading  all  this  in  his  face,  said  quietly: 

"  This  rebellion  will  be  the  ruin  of  Ireland.  It'll  be 
crushed  in  a  few  days;  the  country  will  be  conscripted; 
and  when  the  people  see  the  damage  done  they'll  react  to 
constitutionalism  for  another  generation  and  the  Union  will 
have  a  fresh  lease  of  life." 

"  I  suppose  so,"  said  Bernard. 

"  Hello,  you  chaps! "  said  a  voice  suddenly,  and  turning 
round  they  were  faced  by  Fergus  Moore.  They  had  not 
seen  him  for  over  a  year,  so  they  were  startled  by  the  change 
in  his  appearance,  constitutionally  wrecked  as  he  was  by 
long-continued  dissipation. 

"  Where  are  you  off  to?  "  asked  Hektor. 

"  I'm  going  down  to  the  G.P.O.  to  see  if  they  can  spare 
me  a  rifle." 

"  I  gave  you  credit  for  more  sense,"  said  Stephen.  "  Don't 
you  know  that  this  piece  of  lunacy  is  going  to  be  the  ruin 
of  the  country?  " 

"  Who  can  be  sure  of  anything?  And  what  matter  any- 
way? I've  lived  a  rotten  life,  so  I  may  as  well  die  de- 
cently." 

"At  your  country's  expense?"  said  Stephen. 

"  If  you  saw  D.T.'s  in  front  of  you  you  wouldn't  split 
hairs  over  the  morality  of  a  fight  that  gives  you  a  chance  to 
die  game,  would  you?  I'd  like  to  kill  an  Englishman  or 
two  anyway." 

"  There's  no  canteen  in  the  G.P.O.,"  said  Stephen  drily. 
That's  unworthy  of  you,  Ward,"  replied  Moore.  "  But 


504  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

I'm  going  to  my  death,  so  I  salute  you.     Good-bye  all." 

He  shook  hands  sentimentally  with  the  three  and  marched 
off  towards  the  Post  Office. 

"  I  thought  that  kind  of  character  didn't  exist  outside 
novels,"  said  Hektor.  "  Who  says  Sidney  Carton's  improb- 
able now  ?  " 

"  Those  who  go  seeking  death  never  find  it,"  said  Stephen. 
"  I  bet  you  Moore'll  come  out  of  this  scatheless:  which  is 
more  than  will  happen  to  more  useful  poor  fellows." 

Suddenly  Bernard  cried : 

"  Hello!  Here's  Umpleby,"  and  the  others  looking  round 
saw  the  little  man  approaching  from  the  direction  of  D'Olier 
Street.  He  was  loaded  up  with  equipment,  carried  a  Howth 
rifle  on  his  shoulder,  and  was  quite  breathless. 

"  Oh,  I'm  so  glad  to  have  met  you,"  he  puffed.  "  What's 
the  meaning  of  it  all?  I  was  mobilized  for  a  route  march 
but  it  looks  more  like  a  rebellion.  I  thought  we'd  cancelled 
that  .  .  ." 

Stephen  explained  the  position. 

"  But,"  said  Umpleby,  tentatively  scanning  Stephen's  face. 
"  Er  .  .  .  doesn't  honour  require  that  we  should  throw  in 
our  lot  with  our  comrades?  "  He  was  hoping  with  all  his 
heart  that  it  didn't,  and  his  brow  was  knit  with  anxiety. 

"  I  can's  answer  for  your  honour,"  said  Stephen  bluntly, 
"  but  personally  I'm  going  home." 

Umpleby  heaved  a  sigh  of  relief.  Here  was  good  company 
to  err  with. 

"  I'll  do  the  same,"  he  said.  "  Meanwhile  I  think  I'll 
rid  myself  of  these  superfluous  and  incriminating  impedi- 
menta." Without  more  ado  he  divested  himself  of  his  ac- 
coutrements and  dumped  them,  rifle  and  all,  over  the  parapet 
of  the  bridge  into  the  Liffey. 

"  Now  I  think  I'll  run  off  home,"  he  said.  "  My  wife 
will  be  very  anxious  about  me."  (Distant  firing.)  "  Hear 
that.  She'll  think  they're  all  hitting  me.  .  .  .  Good-bye, 
boys.  He  shook  hands  hurriedly  and  scuttled  back  down 
D'Olier  Street. 


CATASTROPHE  505 

"  I  suppose  I  may  as  well  be  off  home  too,"  said  Bernard. 

"  No.  Come  along  to  the  Neptune  with  us,"  said  Stephen. 
"  We  can  get  you  a  room.  We  may  as  well  stick  together 
in  case  of  trouble." 

Bernard  was  very  pleased  by  this  invitation.  Since  Ma- 
bel's defection  and  the  loss  of  Eugene  and  Willoughby  soli- 
tude had  become  intolerable  to  him.  He  craved  for  human 
society,  and  now  above  all  he  needed  the  support  of  Stephen's 
strong  will  and  character.  Hektor  supplemented  the  invi- 
tation in  his  bluff  way  and  Bernard  accepted  it. 

"  Let's  stroll  on,  then,"  said  Stephen. 

They  crossed  the  bridge  and  walked  down  Sackville  Street, 
which  was  a  chaos  of  strange  sights.  In  the  upper  stories 
of  many  shops  the  windows  had  been  smashed  and  then 
barricaded  with  furniture,  behind  which  could  be  seen  the 
green-clad  forms  of  Volunteer  sentinels  silently  waiting. 
The  street  was  still  thronged  with  wondering  people,  who 
walked  about,  stood  and  stared,  or  flung  jibes  at  the  imper- 
turbable garrisons  of  the  shops.  Excited  children  ran  hither 
and  thither,  and  a  ring  of  them,  with  not  a  few  of  their  elders 
commingled,  was  gathered  round  the  body  of  the  horse  that 
had  been  slain  in  the  affray  with  the  lancers.  At  the  end 
of  Abbey  Street  some  Volunteers  were  erecting  a  barricade 
of  bicycles  and  rolls  of  paper  under  the  curious  and  not 
very  friendly  gaze  of  a  crowd  of  spectators.  The  toilers 
seemed  to  be  embarrassed  by  this  publicity,  and  a  pink-and- 
white  youth  who  acted  as  sentry  was  shyly  endeavouring  to 
make  the  crowd  stand  back.  Some  one  chaffed  him  rudely, 
whereat  he  blushed  and  desisted  from  his  efforts.  He  was  a 
bashful  revolutionary. 

Bernard  and  his  friends  walked  on  and  arrived  opposite 
the  Post  Office,  whose  windows  had  been  smashed  and  barri- 
caded like  those  of  the  shops. 

"I'd  just  like  to  go  in  and  tell  the  dope  crowd  what  I 
think  of  them,"  said  Hektor. 

"  You'd  only  get  shot  for  your  pains,"  said  Stephen. 

Bernard  drew  their  attention  to  a  small  crowd  collected 


506  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

at  the  base  of  Nelson's  Pillar,  evidently  reading  a  poster  of 
some  kind.  He  went  over,  followed  by  the  others,  and  from 
the  outskirts  of  the  crowd  read: 

POBLACHT  NA  H  EIRE  ANN 
THE  PROVISIONAL  GOVERNMENT 

of  the 
IRISH  REPUBLIC 

TO   THE   PEOPLE    OF   IRELAND 

Irishmen  and  Irishwomen :  In  the  name  of  God 
and  of  the  dead  generations  from  which  she  receives 
her  old  traditions  of  nationhood,  Ireland,  through 
us  summons  her  children  to  her  flag  and  strikes  for 
her  freedom  .  .  . 

There  were  too  many  heads  in  the  way  to  read  any  further, 
and  the  others  called  to  him  to  come  on.  The  three  con- 
tinued their  walk,  Bernard  going  slowly  and  very  pensively. 
When  they  reached  the  Parnell  Monument  he  turned  back 
and  saw  once  more  the  flag  waving  in  the  wind,  the  sunlight 
enriching  its  gold  and  green. 

"  It  seems  a  shame  to  desert  them,"  he  said. 

"  Begad,"  said  Hektor.  "  I  hate  leaving  them  in  the  lurch 
like  that." 

"  Look  here,  you  two,"  said  Stephen.  "  Do  you,  or  do 
you  not  believe  that  this  rebellion  is  going  to  be  ruinous  to 
Ireland?"  There  was  no  answer.  "Well  then,"  he  re- 
sumed, "  have  sense  and  come  on.  If  these  people  are  bent 
on  wrecking  the  country  we're  not  going  to  help  them  any- 
how." 

"  But  the  rank-and-file  ?  "  said  Bernard. 

"  Indeed  I'm  sorry  for  them,"  said  Stephen,  "  but  I  don't 


CATASTROPHE  507 

see  how  we  can  help  them.  We  did  what  we  could  these 
last  few  days." 

There  was  nothing  more  to  be  said.  They  turned  their 
backs  on  the  Post  Office,  walked  on  in  silence,  and  in  five 
minutes  were  at  the  Neptune  Hotel.  In  the  hall  they  met 
McGurk  fully  equipped  and  armed. 

"  What  are  you  up  to,  Hugo?  "  asked  Hektor  in  astonish- 
ment. 

"  I'm  going  into  this  bloody  rebellion,"  replied  McGurk. 

"  Don't  be  an  ass,  Hugo,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Ah,  sure  I  know  it's  absurd,"  said  McGurk.  "  But  I 
can't  be  deserting  the  poor  boys." 

"  You'd  rather  desert  your  country  instead  ? "  said 
Stephen. 

"  Sure  this  fight  finishes  Ireland  for  our  time,"  said  Mc- 
Gurk, "  so  we  might  as  well  go  down  with  it.  We'll  all 
be  shot  anyway  whether  we  fight  or  not." 

"  That  doesn't  make  it  right  to  fight,  Hugo." 

"What  matter?  .  .  .  And  I  want  to  kill  a  few  of  them 
bloody  English  before  I  die  anyhow." 

"  Well,"  said  Hektor.     "  Good  luck." 

"  Good  luck,  boys." 

And  Hugo  McGurk  made  his  sally. 

"What  splendid  material  these  fellows  are  going  to 
waste,"  said  Stephen. 

"  The  best  stuff  in  Ireland,"  added  Hektor  .  .  . 

After  lunch  Bernard  crossed  town  to  pay  a  visit  of  warn- 
ing and  reassurance  to  his  mother.  The  poor  lady  could  not 
understand  the  situation  at  all:  it  was  enough  for  her  to 
know  that  her  son  would  not  be  in  the  fighting,  and  she 
made  him  promise  faithfully  to  take  care  of  himself  and  not 
to  stir  out  of  doors. 

In  the  evening  he  returned  to  the  Neptune  Hotel.  The 
aspect  of  the  streets  was  unchanged ;  no  troops  had  as  yet 
appeared  on  the  scene;  but  the  distant  sound  of  sustained 
firing  from  three  different  directions  indicated  that  fighting 
had  already  begun  on  the  outskirts  of  the  city.  In  Sackville 


508  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

Street  the  crowds  had  increased,  but  they  were  of  a  different 
complexion  from  those  of  the  morning.  Dusk  had  sent  re- 
spectable people  to  their  homes  and  lured  forth  the  under- 
world in  search  of  loot.  All  the  ragged,  starving  and  de- 
formed population  of  the  slums  was  abroad  and  looting  had 
already  begun.  Two  sweet-shops  and  a  boot-shop  had  been 
broken  into  and  plundered  to  the  very  walls,  and  a  draper's 
was  being  rapidly  stripped  when  Bernard  appeared  on  the 
scene.  The  dead  horse  still  lay  in  the  centre  of  the  street 
but  attracted  no  more  attention.  Ragged  children  ran  about 
clad  in  all  kinds  of  finery.  Old  women  staggered  along 
with  sacks  bulging  with  loot.  Drunken  harlots  danced  and 
sang.  The  crash  of  another  window  brought  every  one  rac- 
ing in  its  direction  for  more  plunder.  The  shouts  of  quar- 
relling thieves  rang  through  the  air.  In  the  distance  was  the 
muffled  roar  of  the  fighting. 

Bernard  passed  on.  A  dirty,  dishevelled  young  woman 
wearing  a  gorgeous  hat  and  with  a  sealskin  coat  over  her 
tattered  blouse  and  skirt  was  dancing  in  the  middle  of  the 
street  yelling: 

"The  Volunteers  is  up!     Ireland's  free!     Hurroo!" 

Another  equally  repulsive  creature  was  shouting  obsceni- 
ties at  the  garrison  of  the  Post  Office. 

"  Up  th'  Alleys  an'  to  Hell  wid  the  Kayzer!  "  she 
shrieked. 

Grim  and  silent  stood  the  Post  Office  in  the  gloom.  The 
tricolour  hung  limp  from  its  staff.  Bernard  walked  on. 
The  uproar  in  Sackville  Street  sank  to  a  murmur  and  finally 
died  away. 

3 

The  dawn  of  Tuesday  the  twenty-fifth  was  heralded  by 
fresh  bursts  of  rifle  fire.  Bernard  and  his  friends  had  an 
early  breakfast;  and  a  meagre  one,  too,  for  the  Neptune, 
having  many  mouths  to  feed,  had  begun  to  ration  already. 
Dolan,  the  landlord,  came  in  to  them  full  of  news. 

"  Sure,  they're  not  doing  so  bad  at  all,"  he  said. 
They've  got  the  Castle  and  the  whole  country's  up,  and  the 


CATASTROPHE  509 

Jairmans  have  landed  in  Kerry,  and  there's  an  English 
cruiser  sunk  off  Fenit  and  the  Pope's  sent  Pearse  his  bless- 
ing." 

"  Get  out  of  that,  Dolan,  you  old  cod,"  said  Hektor. 

"  It's  God's  truth  I'm  tellin'  ye,  Misther  O'Flaherty," 
said  Dolan.  "  I  wouldn't  tell  ye  thruer  if  ye  were  the  priest 
of  God  and  I  was  on  me  knees  to  ye  in  the  Confessional. 
Sure  the  milkman  told  me  this  morning,  an'  his  brother 
told  him,  an'  the  brother  has  a  son  in  the  Volyunteers,  so 
he  has.  .  .  .  Arrah,  why  aren't  yez  all  in  the  fight?  It's 
down  to  the  G.P.O.  I'd  like  to  be  going  meself,  so  I  would." 

"  If  we  went  down  to  the  G.P.O.,"  said  Hektor,  "  it's 
precious  little  you'd  ever  see  of  the  money  we  owe  you, 
friend  Dolan." 

"  Sure,  you're  welcome,"  said  Dolan,  and  went  over  to 
abuse  the  rebels  and  all  their  generations  to  a  Unionist  cus- 
tomer who  had  just  come  down  to  breakfast. 

The  three  went  out  into  the  streets,  which,  as  on  the 
previous  day,  were  again  thronged  with  the  curious.  Loot- 
ing was  still  going  on  in  Sackville  Street  which  was  strewn 
with  paper,  card-board  boxes,  and  broken  and  discarded 
plunder.  The  sacking  of  Lawrence's  great  toy-shop  was  in 
progress. 

For  half-a-crown  Hektor  obtained  a  copy  of  the  Irish 
Times  from  a  newsboy,  from  which  they  learned  that 
Dolan's  news  was  untrue.  The  attack  on  the  Castle  had 
been  attempted  with  insufficient  forces  and  had  completely 
failed ;  there  had  been  no  German  landing  but  a  ship,  laden 
with  arms,  had  been  sunk  off  Cork;  the  country  was  quiet, 
with,  however,  reports  of  small  movements  in  North  Dublin, 
Wexford  and  Galway ;  the  British  Navy  was  intact ;  and  the 
Pope  was  apparently  neutral.  The  centre  of  the  city  was, 
however,  still  in  the  hands  of  the  Volunteers,  and  their  out- 
posts were  evidently  holding  their  own,  for  the  sullen  firing 
in  the  distance  had  approached  no  nearer.  It  was,  however, 
getting  more  and  more  continuous.  Monday's  sporadic 
bursts  were  replaced  by  a  long,  seldom-interrupted  roar, 


510  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

which  by  midday  was  sustained  almost  without  a  lull,  show- 
ing that  hard  fighting  was  in  progress.  Then  all  of  a  sud- 
den came  an  explosion  of  firing  from  a  quarter  quite  close  to 
the  centre  of  the  city,  and  this  time  it  was  mingled  with  the 
rattle  of  machine  guns. 

"  Can  they  be  attacking  the  Castle  again  ?  "  said  Hektor. 

"  More  likely  the  enemy  have  broken  through  and  are 
attacking  the  City  Hall,"  replied  Stephen. 

The  sounds  of  battle  were  certainly  coming  from  Cork 
Hill,  where,  as  Stephen  surmised,  the  military  were  attack- 
ing in  force.  Volley  followed  volley  of  rifle  fire  until 
volleys  could  no  longer  be  distinguished,  and  howling  them 
down  came  the  relentless  grinding  dud-dud-dud  of  the  ma- 
chine guns.  Two  long  hours  it  lasted  without  intermission, 
while  Bernard  listened  tense  with  excitement  and  anxiety. 
Then  there  was  silence.  What  did  it  indicate?  Bernard 
and  his  friends  could  only  guess,  but  it  meant  that  soldiers 
and  Volunteers  —  Irishmen  both  as  it  happened  —  were 
fighting  desperately  hand-to-hand  up  and  down  the  stair- 
cases and  in  and  out  of  the  rooms  and  corridors  of  the  City 
Hall  and  the  Daily  Express  offices.  No  quarter  was  asked 
or  given  in  that  ferocious  melee,  and  when  the  blood-stained 
buildings  finally  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  military  a 
deathly  silence  settled  down  over  the  city. 

"  What  does  it  mean  ?  "  asked  Bernard. 

"  Hard  to  say,"  replied  Hektor.  "  Probably  they've 
found  infantry  assaults  too  costly  and  they're  going  to  bom- 
bard us." 

"  Poor  old  Dublin !  "  said  Bernard.  He  was  filled  with 
dismay.  The  destruction  of  the  dear  old  city  was  a  melan- 
choly prospect  enough,  but  the  possible  fate  of  its  three  hun- 
dred thousand  inhabitants  was  too  terrible  to  contemplate. 

"  They  couldn't  do  it,"  he  said. 

"  Couldn't  they!  "  said  Hektor,  ominously. 

"  It  doesn't  make  much  odds  either  way,"  said  Stephen. 
"  Another  few  days  like  this  and  we'll  all  be  starving." 


CATASTROPHE  511 

4 

Dublin  has  reason  to  be  proud  of  Easter  Week,  for  the 
gay,  shabby,  majestic  old  city  bore  herself  bravely  during  her 
six  days'  agony.  While  her  young  Volunteers,  sleepless, 
hungry,  and  bewildered,  fought  heroically  against  over- 
whelming odds,  her  citizens  faced  the  horrors  which  had  so 
suddenly  and  unexpectedly  fallen  upon  them  with  calmness 
and  fortitude.  Indeed,  their  principal  feeling  throughout 
was  one  of  curiosity,  and  they  were  foolhardy  in  the  ex- 
treme in  their  desire  to  satisfy  it.  Tradesmen  went  about 
their  humdrum  and  necessary  business  with  matter-of-fact 
courage  in  face  of  every  danger.  So  long  as  there  was  milk 
to  deliver  the  milkmen  delivered  it;  so  long  as  there  was 
bread  it  did  not  remain  undistributed;  and  it  was  the  same 
with  all  the  providers  of  necessities.  When  the  fires  began 
to  add  a  new  horror  to  the  situation  the  fire  brigade  crossed 
bullet-swept  zones  to  fulfil  their  duty  and  so  saved  the  city 
from  certain  destruction.  Of  panic  there  was  no  sign 
anywhere. 

On  Wednesday  the  bombardment  began.  In  the  morn- 
ing the  gunboat  Helga  steamed  up  the  Liffey,  pounded  Lib- 
erty Hall  into  ruins,  and  proceeded  to  drop  shells  into  Sack- 
ville  Street.  Rifle-fire  at  the  same  time  began  afresh  and 
the  machine-guns  recommenced  their  infernal  racket.  To 
those  who  listened  it  seemed  that  the  whole  city  must  in- 
evitably be  destroyed,  for  what  buildings  could  possibly  sur- 
vive the  fearful  tornado  that  smote  upon  their  ears?  As 
soon  as  the  din  slackened  in  one  quarter  it  burst  forth  even 
more  vigorously  in  another.  Thus,  when  the  dwellers  on 
the  south  side  noticed  a  slight  diminution  in  the  distant  roar 
from  Sackville  Street,  with  shattering  suddenness  crashed 
forth  a  violent  fusillade  close  at  hand :  where  troops  nelwly 
arrived  from  England  and  on  the  march  from  Kingstown 
had  fallen  upon  the  Volunteer  outposts  in  the  Pembroke 
area  and  been  repulsed  with  heavy  loss.  And  even  as  the 
sounds  of  this  conflict  died  away,  from  the  southeast  with 
redubled  intensity  burst  out  the  cannonade  which  the  Helga 


5i2  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

was  directing  against  the  stronghold  of  Boland's  Mill. 
Then  it  too  gave  place  to  the  sounds  of  a  fresh  attack  from 
the  north.  So  all  day  long  the  thunder  of  battle  rolled 
unceasingly ;  it  went  on  muttering  even  after  dark ;  and  there 
were  vicious  bursts  at  intervals  during  the  night  .  .  . 

Thursday  brought  hunger  and  the  fires.  There  was  no 
milk  that  day,  and  no  bread:  people  counted  themselves 
lucky  to  scrape  together  a  meal  of  black  tea,  stale  crusts,  and 
scraps  of  meat.  The  sun  shone  brilliantly  as  it  did  all 
through  the  week.  The  battle  roar  boomed  forth  again, 
more  heavily  than  ever,  but  it  had  ceased  to  terrify.  It  had 
become  monotonous.  All  count  of  time  had  been  lost;  peo- 
ple felt  almost  as  if  the  rebellion  had  always  been,  and  came 
to  accept  it  as  a  thing  of  custom  and  part  of  the  natural 
order  of  the  day.  On  Monday,  Tuesday,  and  Wednesday, 
people  had  asked  each  other  incessantly:  "  How  long  is  it 
going  to  last?  "  On  Thursday  they  asked  it  no  more. 

About  midday  came  the  first  of  the  fires.  Following  the 
fall  of  a  succession  of  shells  a  thin  wisp  of  smoke  rose  up 
from  a  shattered  house  in  Abbey  Street.  Almost  simul- 
taneously a  second  appeared  further  on.  There  was  no 
pause  in  the  shooting.  Flames  began  to  leap  out  of  the 
windows  of  some  of  the  houses,  and  still  shell  after  shell 
dropped  in  the  area.  A  dense  column  of  flame-reddened 
smoke  came  billowing  up  out  of  the  wrecked  buildings,  and 
with  a  crackle  and  roar  and  the  thunderous  fall  of  beams 
and  masonry  the  fire  began  to  spread  in  every  direction. 
Soon  the  whole  block  of  buildings  bounded  by  Abbey  Street, 
Sackville  Street,  and  Eden  Quay  was  ablaze.  Great  black- 
and-ruddy  pillars  of  smoke  rose  up  into  the  sultry  air,  eddy- 
ing and  bulging  and  spreading  themselves  into  a  vast  canopy 
aloft.  As  night  fell  the  terrified  inhabitants  saw  the  sky  lit 
by  a  lurid  glare,  and  so  immense  was  the  conflagration  that 
even  in  the  outlying  districts  the  spectators  received  the  im- 
pression that  it  was  close  at  hand.  It  was  generally  be- 
lieved that  the  whole  city  was  doomed,  and  that  night  no- 
body slept. 


CATASTROPHE  513 

5 

"  Our  boys  are  the  stuff,"  said  Hektor  to  Stephen. 
"  They  sure  are  making  some  stand." 

"  And  all  for  nothing,"  replied  Stephen.  "  What  waste 
of  courage  and  material." 

It  was  the  evening  of  the  fourth  day  of  the  insurrection. 
The  sounds  of  battle  were  continuous ;  the  smell  of  burning 
tainted  all  the  atmosphere;  the  glow  from  the  flames  of 
Sackville  Street  leaping  skyward  grotesquely  illuminated 
the  smoking-room  of  the  Neptune,  paling  the  light  of  the 
single  candle  that  burned  on  the  mantelpiece. 

"  I  don't  like  the  look  in  Bernard's  eye,"  said  Stephen. 
"  He's  been  over-wrought  during  this  last  month  and  this 
catastrophe  seems  to  have  upset  him  completely.  He's  in 
the  mood  for  any  kind  of  folly,  I'm  afraid.  Where  is  he 
now?  " 

"  Out  on  the  roof,"  said  Hektor.  "  He's  like  a  young 
soldier  under  fire  for  the  first  time.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
men  and  they  each  act  differently  in  that  situation:  one  sort 
gets  panicky  and  wants  to  run  away;  the  other  sort  gets 
nervy  and  wants  to  get  near  the  firing.  That's  Bernard's 
sort.  I  hope  he's  not  going  to  do  anything  silly." 

Abruptly,  the  cannonade  stopped  and  they  could  hear 
faintly  the  hiss  and  crackle  of  the  Sackville  Street  furnace. 

Out  on  the  roof  stood  Bernard  gazing  fascinated  at  the 
blaze.  Great  tongues  of  flame  licked  at  the  purple  sky  and 
playing  on  the  smoke-columns  gave  them  a  sanguine  hue. 
Black  and  red  was  the  canopy  that  obscured  the  face  of  the 
moon,  who,  just  past  her  full,  glanced  down  once  through  a 
rent  in  its  texture  and  straight  was  veiled  again.  Jets  and 
cascades  of  sparks  spurted  up  and  were  blotted  out  or  rum- 
bled back  to  earth.  Sooty  and  flaming  particles  drifted 
about  close  at  hand  and  fell  around  him.  The  acrid  smell 
of  burning  tickled  his  nostrils.  The  rims  of  his  eyes  and 
the  back  of  his  throat  smarted.  After  the  cessation  of  the 
cannonade  the  random  rifle-shooting  of  the  night  was  re- 
sumed. 


5H  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"  Poor  old  Dublin,"  he  muttered. 

The  last  two  days  he  had  passed  in  a  state  of  hardly  sup- 
pressed nervous  excitement.  With  the  music  of  the  guns 
stirring  the  battle-lust  of  the  warrior  latent  within  him  he 
had  found  it  increasingly  difficult  to  restrain  himself  from 
rushing  out  headlong  into  the  fight,  and  the  impassivity  of 
his  friends  had  been  a  source  of  constant  irritation.  As 
the  fight  progressed  the  actual  circumstances  of  its  bringing 
about  became  less  and  less  important  to  him;  and  more  and 
more  clamant  came  the  call  of  Ireland  and  his  comrades. 
Swamping  all  ratiocination  rose  the  feeling  that  Ireland  was 
fighting  for  her  life  and  that  he  was  standing  aside  and 
looking  on.  As  the  battle  raged  fiercer  and  fiercer  he 
fancied  that  the  Bocanachs  and  Bananachs  and  Witches  of 
the  Valley,  that  had  danced  on  the  spear  points  of 
the  warriors  of  the  Tain,  were  riding  the  shells  and  rushing 
behind  the  bullets,  shrieking  over  the  carnage  and  destruc- 
tion of  the  fray,  and  mocking  at  him  in  his  safety  and  seclu- 
sion. 

"  Keep  cool,"  Hektor  had  said  to  him.  "  There'll  be  an- 
other fight  after  this.  When  they  come  to  conscript  the 
country  who  will  there  be  to  lead  the  people  unless  we 
survive?  " 

But  now  he  was  in  no  mood  to  think.  He  beheld  his 
city  devoured  by  flames;  he  foresaw  the  downfall  of  his 
country  and  the  destruction  of  the  movement  that  had  been 
his  pride;  he  had  heard  in  the  streets  the  curses  of  the 
people  against  the  insurrection,  its  leaders,  and  all  who  had 
act  or  part  in  it.  He  was  weary  of  life,  too:  he  had  borne 
more  sorrow  in  a  month  than  comes  to  many  in  years;  and 
he  asked  himself  whether  existence  would  be  endurable  in 
the  beaten  and  enslaved  Ireland  of  the  future. 

"What  is  there  left  to  live  for?"  he  cried.  "What  is 
life  without  hope?  What  more  poisonous  than  vain  re- 
grets?" 

With  that  he  gave  one  more  look  at  the  leaping  fury  in  the 


CATASTROPHE  515 

southern  sky,  rushed  down  from  the  roof,  and,  hatless  and 
unarmed  as  he  was,  went  out  into  the  night. 

Stephen  and  Hektor  heard  the  hall-door  slam,  and  half- 
suspecting  what  had  occurred  they  started  up  and  made  one 
for  the  door,  the  other  for  the  roof.  Stephen  opened  the 
door  and  looked  out,  but  no  one  was  in  sight.  Hektor  came 
down  and  announced  that  Bernard  was  gone. 

"  I  expected  it,"  said  Stephen. 

"  Oughtn't  we  to  go  and  look  for  him?  "  said  Hektor, 
but  Stephen  shook  his  head. 

"  No  use,"  he  said.  "  We'd  never  find  him  now,  and 
even  if  we  did  we  couldn't  bring  him  back." 

Meanwhile,  Bernard  was  seeking  the  way  to  the  Post 
Office.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  reach  it  by  Sack- 
ville  Street,  bullet-swept  as  it  was  and  lit  up  by  the  glare 
of  the  burning  buildings,  so  he  went  hunting  for  a  way 
round  to  the  west  hoping  to  strike  on  Mary  Street  and  so 
slip  in  by  the  rear.  But  this  part  of  the  town  being  un- 
familiar to  him  he  lost  himself.  Wandering  vaguely  on  he 
got  entangled  in  a  labyrinth  of  bye  streets  and  finally  lost 
all  sense  of  his  direction  until,  happening  on  a  wider  street, 
he  got  a  glimpse  of  the  Pole  Star,  by  whose  guidance  he  set 
forward  once  more  on  a  southeasterly  course. 

And  then  he  encountered  the  sentry.  Right  at  the  end  of 
the  street  he  stood,  an  unmistakable  figure  in  his  trench 
helmet  and  with  the  moonlight  glinting  on  his  fixed  bayonet. 
Bernard  wras  astonished  to  see  him,  and  dismayed,  too,  for 
he  was  himself  unarmed.  He  guessed,  however,  that  in  the 
bye  street  he  had  got  through  the  cordon  which  the  military 
were  drawing  round  the  centre  of  the  city,  and  he  realized 
that  to  reach  the  Post  Office  he  must  break  his  way  back 
through  it.  So  he  went  on.  Slinking  slowly  along  the 
shadowy  side  of  the  street  he  got  to  within  twenty  yards  of 
the  sentry,  whose  back  was  towards  him,  without  being 
heard.  Then,  bracing  himself,  he  made  a  rush.  The  sentry 
turned  at  the  sound  of  running  feet,  but  Bernard  was  upon 


516  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

him  before  he  could  bring  his  rifle  to  the  present.  They 
grappled,  but  not  for  long.  The  soldier  was  a  degenerate 
little  factory  hand  and  Bernard  flung  him  easily.  Down  he 
went,  his  rifle  underneath  him,  and  Bernard  on  top.  The 
soldier  attempted  to  shout,  but  Bernard  gripped  his  throat 
with  his  left  hand,  half  strangling  him,  and  looked  about 
for  a  weapon.  The  bayonet  caught  his  eye.  Throwing  his 
whole  weight  on  top  of  the  enemy  and  holding  on  tight  to 
his  throat,  with  his  free  hand  he  unfixed  the  bayonet  from 
the  rifle.  There  was  fear  and  horror  in  the  soldier's  eyes, 
which  made  Bernard  pause  a  moment.  Then  "  It's  my  life 
or  yours,"  he  muttered,  and  with  some  difficulty  forced  the 
steel  home.  The  soldier  gave  a  gasp  and  a  shudder  and  then 
became  limp. 

At  that  a  cold  reaction  came  upon  Bernard.  Rising  to  his 
feet  and  dropping  the  bayonet  he  stood  gazing  down  on  the 
corpse. 

"  Poor  devil!  "  he  muttered. 

All  the  fire  had  gone  out  of  him,  leaving  him  weak  and 
hesitating.  He  remained  standing  there,  gazing  stupidly  at 
his  victim.  The  dead  eyes  were  starting  from  their  sockets ; 
the  throat  was  bruised ;  there  was  a  great  dark  stain  on  the 
breast  of  the  tunic. 

"My  God!  I've  killed  a  man!"  he  told  himself  in 
ghastly  realization. 

He  thought  of  those  to  whom  that  poor  body  might  be 
dear  .  .  .— 

He  had  no  desire  to  get  to  the  Post  Office  now,  and  even 
as  he  thought  of  making  for  home  he  heard  footsteps  ap- 
proaching. He  turned  and  fled  back  the  way  he  had  come. 
There  were  sounds  of  pursuit  for  a  while,  but  he  soon  left 
them  behind.  He  slackened  his  pace  and  wandered  on.  He 
was  lost  once  more  in  the  dark  deserted  streets,  but  still  he 
blundered  forward.  He  knew  not  what  he  was  doing  nor 
where  he  was  going.  In  his  condition  of  physical  and 
mental  exhaustion  everything  about  him  seemed  unreal,  and 
he  felt  as  if  he  were  in  a  nightmare. 


CATASTROPHE  517 

It  was  in  this  condition  that  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  a 
military  patrol.  The  meeting  was  a  surprise  to  both  parties, 
for  they  were  simultaneously  approaching  a  street  corner  at 
a  moment  when  a  prolonged  spell  of  firing  obscured  all  other 
sounds.  Bernard  was  seized  before  he  had  time  to  realize 
what  had  happened,  and  in  his  state  of  carelessness  and 
stupefaction  he  made  no  attempt  to  answer  the  questions  put 
to  him. 

"  There's  blood  on  'is  'ands,  sergeant,"  observed  one  of 
his  captors. 

" me,"  ejaculated  the  sergeant.  "  Then  w'd  best 

lock  'im  up." 

Bernard  was  put  in  charge  of  a  corporal  and  three  men 
who  marched  him  off  forthwith. 

"  If  you're  one  of  these  'ere  Sin  Finers,"  observed  the 
corporal,  "  you've  no  call  to  be  ashimed  of  it.  They  can 
fight  orlright.  As  I  said  to  Bill  'ere  this  morning,  standing 
as  you  might  say  on  the  edge  o'  the  grive,  with  the  bullets 

whizzing  orl  rahnd  us,  ' me,  Bill,'  I  says,  '  these  fellows 

are  the  stuff.'  " 

Bernard  remained  silent,  and  in  another  minute  they 
reached  the  gloomy  sprawling  bulk  of  a  military  barracks. 
A  lamp  flashed  through  the  gate  which  was  immediately 
opened. 

"  Taken  in  arms?  "  asked  the  sergeant  of  the  guard  when 
Bernard  was  handed  over. 

"  Unharmed,"  replied  the  corporal. 

"  Lucky  for  him,"  said  the  sergeant. 

A  tall  man  in  civilian  clothes  came  forward  out  of  the 
guard-room  and  after  a  careful  scrutiny  by  the  light  of  a 
lamp  which  he  carried  seemed  to  recognize  Bernard. 

"  Important  prisoner,"  he  grunted. 

Bernard's  original  captors  marched  away.  He  was  placed 
in  the  custody  of  a  fresh  corporal's  guard  and  conducted 
across  the  gravelled  barrack  yard  to  a  door  in  one  corner; 
then  down  a  flight  of  steps,  along  a  flagged  corridor,  dimly 
illuminated  and  dismally  echoing,  down  another  flight  of 


518  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

steps,  and  into  another  corridor  dark  and  damp  and  cold. 
The  corporal  switched  on  an  electric  torch,  took  a  key  from 
his  pocket,  and  pulled  open  a  heavy  iron  door,  revealing  a 
cavity  blacker  than  night. 

Bernard  was  thrust  inside  and  the  door  was  slammed  and 
locked.  He  was  in  utter  darkness.  The  sound  of  the  re- 
ceding feet  of  his  captors  died  away  in  the  distance,  and  he 
felt  that  the  last  link  connecting  him  with  the  living  world 
was  gone.  He  was  entombed. 

He  stood  for  a  few  moments  absolutely  still,  stunned  by 
a  feeling  of  overwhelming  despair.  Then  gradually  his 
senses  became  again  perceptive.  No  ray  of  light  penetrated 
the  obscurity.  The  atmosphere  was  cold  yet  oppressive, 
and  stank  abominably.  Walking  round  the  cell  he  found 
that  it  was  very  small,  which  seemed  to  add  to  its  horror; 
and  he  was  seized  by  a  fierce  despairing  impulse  to  kick  and 
batter  at  the  door.  He  restrained  it,  however,  though  the 
sensation  of  being  buried  and  forgotten  was  chillingly  real. 

His  body  ached  with  bruises.  One  of  his  nails  had  been 
torn  off  in  the  struggle  with  the  sentry  but  in  the  march  of 
events  the  wound  had  gone  unheeded.  Now  that  he  had 
time  to  think  he  became  painfully  conscious  of  its  burning 
agony.  He  tried  to  assuage  it  by  sucking,  but  this  only  made 
it  worse.  He  tried  leaving  it  alone,  but  still  it  tortured  him. 
He  put  it  in  his  mouth  again  and  by  the  counter-irritation 
of  gnawing  the  finger  low  down  near  the  knuckled  gained 
some  relief. 

He  wandered  about  aimlessly.  He  was  tired  and  longed 
for  sleep,  but  the  notion  of  sleep  in  that  tomb  appalled  him : 
it  would  be  too  like  death.  Moreover,  he  shrank  from 
touching  any  part  of  the  cell,  imagining  the  walls  to  be 
slimy  and  filthy  and  dreading  to  think  of  what  might  not  be 
on  the  floor.  So  he  stood  in  the  dark  for  an  hour  or  more, 
wondering,  grieving,  thinking,  despairing.  Nature,  how- 
ever, proved  too  strong  for  him.  His  frame  was  exhausted, 
his  eyelids  weighted.  He  sat  down  in  a  corner  of  the  cell, 
leaning  his  head  against  the  wall.  His  hand,  dropping  to 


CATASTROPHE  519 

the  floor,  came  in  contact  with  some  nameless  shapeless 
filth,  the  touch  of  which  made  him  shudder.  And  after  that 
he  fell  asleep  .  .  . 

He  was  awakened  by  the  arrival  of  a  soldier  with  food. 
There  was  a  dim  grey  light  in  the  cell  coming  from  a  nar- 
row slit  very  high  up  in  the  wall.  Very  faint  and  far  away 
he  could  hear  the  muffled  rumble  of  war. 

6 

"  Things  are  quieter  this  morning,"  observed  Hugo  Mc- 
Gurk  on  Friday. 

He  and  his  section  held  a  house  commanding  one  of  the 
canal  bridges.  Every  windowpane  in  the  building  had  been 
smashed  and  the  embrasures  were  fortified  with  sand  bags, 
mattresses  and  articles  of  fuiniture.  These  ramparts  had 
been  riddled  and  splintered  by  bullets,  and  the  front  of  the 
house  was  chipped  and  spotted  and  scarred  all  over,  for  the 
position  had  been  under  fire  most  of  the  previous  day.  The 
garrison  had  originally  numbered  eight,  but  two  had  been 
slain,  and  three  of  the  survivors  wore  bandages.  Smoke- 
grimed,  hungry,  and  exhausted  they  had  scarcely  left  their 
posts  at  the  windows  for  close  on  eighteen  hours,  but  their 
spirits  were  still  undaunted.  No  heart  could  fail  under  Mc- 
Gurk's  cheery  command. 

Grimmest  and  most  fearless  of  all  the  garrison  was  the 
grizzled  recruit,  John  M alone.  Firing  with  deadly  speed 
and  accuracy  he  had  done  more  to  repel  yesterday's  assaults 
that  all  the  rest  of  his  companions  put  together.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  day  a  bullet  had  pierced  his  right  forearm  but 
he  had  barely  given  time  to  allow  it  to  be  bandaged  before 
he  was  back  at  his  post  dealing  out  death  once  more.  It  was 
to  him  that  McGurk's  remark  had  been  addressed. 

"  I  guess  things  will  be  all  the  hotter  when  they  come," 
he  replied.  "  I  tell  you,  sergeant,  this  has  been  some  fight. 
Well  worth  living  for,  my  son." 

The  sentry  from  the  roof  entered  the  room  just  then  and 
saluted  McGurk. 


520  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

"Troops  massing  at  the  end  of  the  road,"  he  reported. 

McGurk  made  the  round  of  his  defences. 

"  Hold  your  fire  till  you're  sure  to  hit,  boys,"  he  said. 
"  Mulligan,  keep  your  head  down.  We  can't  afford  any 
more  casualties.  .  .  .  Kelly,  don't  waste  your  ammunition. 
...  If  any  Red  Cross  waggons  come  along  fire  on  them. 
We've  been  done  in  the  eye  that  way  once  too  often.  .  .  . 
Now,  boys,  they're  coming  ..." 

A  tornado  of  firing  burst  forth  as  he  spoke.  Bullets 
came  through  the  windows  and  pattered  on  the  opposite 
walls.  The  rooms  were  filled  with  smoke  and  dust.  A 
Red  Cross  waggon  came  down  the  street  and  on  to  the 
bridge.  Then  there  was  an  explosion  and  it  came  to  a 
standstill.  Malone  had  emptied  his  magazine  into  the  bon- 
net. Soldiers  poured  out  from  it  and  made  a  rush  for  the 
house.  Down  went  three  of  them:  a  few  ran  back:  half  a 
dozen  came  storming  at  the  garden  gate.  The  man  at  the 
window  over  the  hall  door  dropped  his  empty  rifle  and  fired 
both  barrels  of  a  shot  gun  loaded  with  buckshot  into  the 
midst  of  them.  Four  fell  and  the  remainder  ran  away 
screaming  with  pain.  More  soldiers  came  pouring  over  the 
bridge.  Malone,  hurrying  not  at  all,  but  still  firing  with 
the  same  monotonous  regularity,  picked  off  man  after  man 
and  drove  the  survivors  behind  the  waggon  for  shelter. 
Some  of  them  began  shooting  from  this  piece  of  cover,  and 
Mulligan  fell  dead  with  a  bullet  in  his  brain. 

"Steady,  boys!  "  cried  McGurk.  "Heads  down!  Shoot 
slow." 

There  was  a  lull  in  the  combat.  A  bandaged  warrior 
stepped  up  to  McGurk. 

"  Ammunition  nearly  gone,"  he  said. 

"  Well,  well,"  said  McGurk.  "  We'll  have  to  retreat,  I 
suppose."  He  thought  a  moment.  "  Have  you  any  am- 
munition left,  Malone?  "  he  shouted. 

"  Plenty,"  called  back  Malone. 

"Well,  the  rest  of  you  fall  back  over  the  roofs,"  said 
McGurk.  "You  take  command  of  them,  Mick.  Me  and 


CATASTROPHE  521 

Malone   will   hold   the   rear  for   a  bit.     Carry  on  now." 

The  man  saluted  and  marched  off  with  his  three  comrades. 

"  Here  they  are  again,"  cried  Malone  and  re-opened  fire. 
McGurk  dropped  behind  a  sand-bag  and  did  the  same. 
His  shooting  was  wilder  than  Malone's  and  not  so  accurate, 
but  he  did  some  damage  all  the  same.  It  was,  however, 
hopeless  for  these  two  to  stop  the  enemy's  rush.  Over  the 
bridge  it  came  and  into  the  garden.  A  terrible  explosion 
told  of  bombs  flung  at  the  door,  and  at  that  moment  Malone 
gave  a  cry  of  pain  and  rolled  over.  McGurk  rushed  to  his 
side. 

"  I'm  done,"  said  Malone.  "  You'd  better  git."  And 
he  died. 

It  was  too  late  to  retreat.  Down  went  the  door  with  a 
crash  and  the  enemy  surged  into  the  hall  and  up  the  stairs. 
McGurk  rushed  out  on  to  the  landing.  Bang!  went  his  last 
cartridge  and  the  foremost  soldier  dropped.  On  came  the 
others,  a  tall  man  and  a  little  man  at  their  head.  McGurk 
at  the  stair-head  crossed  bayonets  with  the  tall  man,  and  the 
little  man  tried  to  run  in  under  his  guard.  McGurk 
knocked  up  the  tall  man's  rifle  and  dealt  the  little  man  a  kick 
in  stomach  that  sent  him  reeling.  Back  and  forward  went 
McGurk's  bayonet  like  the  tongue  of  a  snake,  jabbing  the 
tall  man  in  the  chest.  Before  he  could  withdraw  it  another 
man  leapt  over  the  body  of  the  little  man  and  stabbed  Mc- 
Gurk in  the  side.  McGurk  uttered  a  curse  and  went  back  a 
step.  Another  man  thrust  at  him,  wounding  his  thigh. 
With  a  roar  of  anger  McGurk  clubbed  his  rifle  and  smashed 
in  his  assailant's  head,  but  at  the  same  moment  he  was 
wounded  again  by  another  foe.  Then  at  last  he  fell  and  the 
whole  band  swarmed  up  and  over  him,  trampling  the  life  out 
of  him  .  .  . 

Once  more  the  tumult  of  war  crashed  over  the  city. 
With  redoubled  intensity  the  big  guns  boomed  and  the  ma- 
chine guns  rattled,  and  gallantly  the  diminishing  rifles  of 
the  Volunteers  answered  back.  The  Post  Office,  heart  and 
brain  of  the  insurrection,  was  being  shelled.  After  twenty 


522  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

minutes  of  intense  bombardment  those  who  watched  saw  the 
Republican  Flag  become  obscured  by  a  cloud  of  smoke.  Up 
from  the  roof  rushed  a  swirling  black  column,  and  soon 
afterwards  a  long  flame  curled  up  out  of  one  of  the  windows 
and  licked  at  the  foot  of  the  flag  staff.  Little  figures  could 
be  discerned  running  about  on  the  roof  desperately  fighting 
the  flames  amid  a  hail  of  bullets.  Their  efforts  were  useless. 
Out  of  the  windows  and  through  the  roof  leaped  the  red 
blaze.  Soon  the  whole  interior  was  irretrievably  involved 
and  the  building  had  become  a  vast  raging  furnace.  With 
a  crash  the  whole  internal  structure  fell  in  and  a  gigantic 
pillar  of  smoke  and  flame  and  sparks  and  incandescent  frag- 
ments shot  up  into  the  sky.  Down  came  the  sparks  again  in 
a  glittering  cascade ;  up  rushed  another  fury  of  flames ;  down 
rolled  the  smoke  in  coiling  fuming  billows,  spreading  them- 
selves abroad  or  dissipating  themselves  in  filmy  clouds. 
Soon  nothing  was  left  of  the  building  but  the  four  bare 
walls,  from  one  corner  of  which  the  flag  still  flew.  It  was 
still  flying  over  the  red  glowing  embers  when  night  fell. 
For  an  hour  after  dark  it  still  fluttered  feebly  in  the  breeze. 
Then  suddenly  the  staff  lurched  forward  and  went  down. 

7 

Loneliness  intolerable;  darkness  impenetrable;  despair  un- 
fathomable: another  long  night  stretched  before  Bernard  in 
his  subterranean  dungeon.  The  day  had  been  long  and 
tedious  enough.  After  the  man  who  had  brought  him  food 
in  the  morning  had  departed,  not  a  soul  had  come  near  him, 
not  a  sound  had  been  heard  in  the  corridor  outside.  He 
began  to  fear  that  he  had  been  forgotten.  As  the  weary 
hours  dragged  themselves  along  he  waited  and  hoped,  hoped 
and  waited  for  another  visit  however  brief:  anything  to 
break  the  appalling  silence  and  monotony.  But  the  grey 
light  faded,  the  night  began,  and  he  knew  that  he  was  aban- 
doned. What  had  happened?  Was  Dublin  destroyed? 
Had  the  barracks  been  taken  and  the  garrison  slain?  Was 
he  to  be  left  here  down  in  the  depths  of  the  earth,  to  smother 


CATASTROPHE  523 

and  starve  ?  Horrifying  thought,  that  sent  him  to  batter  at 
the  iron  door  until  he  was  exhausted.  All  his  strength  was 
gone  now,  and  he  was  sick  with  hunger.  He  tottered  and 
fell,  bruising  his  head  on  the  stone  floor;  then,  painfully,  he 
crawled  into  a  corner  and  sat  still. 

He  was  destitute  of  hope  now  and  his  only  wish  was  that 
death  would  come  quickly  and  mercifully.  He  closed  his 
eyes,  thinking  of  death  as  a  pleasant  restful  sinking  into  a 
warm  velvet-like  oblivion.  He  imagined  that  he  felt  it 
coming  to  him  and  resigned  himself  to  it  joyfully.  But  he 
was  only  falling  asleep.  In  a  short  time  he  was  awake 
again,  shivering  with  cold,  and  with  a  throbbing  pain  in  his 
head  that  made  the  pain  in  his  finger  seem  mild  by  contrast. 
He  groaned  in  anguish  to  find  himself  still  alive.  "  Buried 
alive,"  a  voice  seemed  to  say  to  him.  "  Buried  alive!  Bur- 
ied alive  " ;  the  terrible  words,  beating  rhythmically  in  his 
brain,  made  him  want  to  make  another  dash  for  freedom,  but 
he  found  himself  too  weak  to  rise.  How  his  head  ached! 
He  slept  again ;  slept  and  woke  alternately  through  several 
shivering  hours.  While  he  slept  he  dreamed,  and  while  he 
lay  awake  his  brain  worked  feverishly  and  automatically. 
He  could  no  more  control  his  thoughts  than  his  dreams: 
both  took  possession  of  him  and  made  him  their  plaything. 
Soon  he  was  unable  to  distinguish  between  the  dreams  of 
his  sleeping  and  those  of  his  waking,  which  became  inter- 
mingled and  continuous  like  the  strands  of  a  thread  or  the 
threads  of  a  tangle. 

He  lived  over  again  the  events  of  the  past  month.  He 
saw  Eugene  fighting  desperately  for  his  life  amid  fire  and 
darkness:  heard  him  calling  for  help:  saw  him  go  down  be- 
fore a  dozen  bayonets  and  turn  reproachful  eyes  on  himself 
standing  by  inactive.  He  saw  scenes  from  their  life  as  boys: 
saw  himself  treating  Eugene  always  with  scornful  neglect: 
saw  Eugene  vainly  attempting  to  propitiate  him  and  make 
friends:  saw  again  that  reproachful  look  in  his  eyes.  He 
felt  himself  base,  with  a  baseness  of  which  he  had  never 
been  conscious  before.  ...  In  the  red  fire-glow  from  his 


524  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

own  hearth  he  saw  Willoughby  as  he  had  seen  him  their  last 
evening  together.  Then  the  hearth  vanished  and  the  glow 
seemed  to  come  from  a  burning  village.  He  found  himself 
standing  beside  a  grave  in  Picardy  feeling  once  more  the 
flood  of  grief  burst  over  him  with  all  the  keenness  of  first 
realization. 

He  saw  his  early  days  of  courtship  with  Mabel,  but  they 
were  no  longer  days  of  undiluted  happiness.  Always  they 
were  strolling  along  a  dark  cedar-bordered  avenue  and  fre- 
quently quarrelling  over  some  trifling  difference.  Then 
they  would  come  round  a  curve  and  beyond  it  Janet  would 
be  standing,  and  she  would  say:  "/  wouldn't  quarrel  with 
you.  Why  did  you  hurt  me?  "  Then  he  would  start  for- 
ward to  go  to  her,  but  Mabel  would  hold  him  back,  and 
Janet  would  disappear  in  the  shadows.  Afterwards  he  and 
Mabel  would  be  walking  together  in  the  Dublin  streets, 
and  Musgrave's  bestial  face  would  appear  out  of  a  cloud  of 
dust.  Mabel  would  say :  "  You  like  dust  and  all  sorts  of 
horrid  things:  so  you  can  keep  them,"  and  she  would  leave 
him  and  go  over  to  Musgrave.  Another  time  she  was  re- 
monstrating with  him  for  sacrificing  their  marriage  to  poli- 
tics, and  he  was  replying  that  politics  was  a  sacred  duty. 
Then  appeared  Austin  Mallow  saying:  "  Do  you  think  we'll 
let  ourselves  be  held  back  by  you?  Our  minds  are  made  up, 
and  if  you  interfere  we'll  crush  you  without  a  thought. 
And  at  that  Mabel  burst  out  laughing  and  said :  "  So 
there's  your  lovely  politics:  and  you'd  sacrifice  me  for  that." 
Thereupon  he  showed  her  a  picture  of  the  island  of  his 
childish  imagination,  and  opening  his  soul  to  her  as  he  had 
never  done  in  life  unfolded  to  her  all  his  hopes  and  projects; 
but  at  these  she  only  laughed  and  said:  "  That's  not  politics. 
It's  only  a  dream."  "  Only  a  dream!  "  he  replied.  "  No, 
the  world  is  a  dream  if  you  like,  or  rather  a  nightmare. 
These  are  the  only  realities."  But  she  merely  laughed  again, 
and  in  the  midst  of  her  laughter  he  awoke  to  the  dark  silence 
of  the  dungeon. 

In  this  waking  interval  his  thoughts  reverted  to  the  in- 


CATASTROPHE  525 

surrection.  What  would  be  its  results,  he  asked  himself. 
What  would  be  the  fate  of  the  rebels?  Of  his  friends? 
Of  himself?  Death,  he  felt  certain,  would  be  meted  out  to 
the  rebel  leaders,  and  perhaps  to  the  rank  and  file  as  well. 
He  and  his  friends  would  be  less  fortunate:  long  sentences 
of  penal  servitude  would  be  their  fate:  a  dreary  desolate 
prospect  of  wasted  life  sickening  to  contemplate.  At  that 
he  gave  way  to  a  recrudescence  of  violent  anger  against  the 
authors  of  the  calamity  and  the  things  they  had  done  to 
enforce  their  will.  What  had  they  achieved?  In  one  mad 
week  they  had  shattered  work  of  years:  dead  were  some  of 
the  bravest  hearts  in  Ireland:  broken  was  the  orderly,  con- 
structive, enthusiastic  movement  that  was  to  have  been  built 
up  until  it  had  became  the  Irish  nation.  He  gave  himself 
up  to  vain  regrets  over  his  vanished  hopes.  And  what  of 
the  future?  Stephen's  prophecy  came  back  vividly  to  his 
memory.  He  saw  the  Irish  people,  helpless  and  leaderless, 
tortured  and  dragooned,  and  conscripted  into  the  armies  of 
the  oppressor.  He  saw  Ireland,  plundered  of  wealth  and 
manhood,  lose  sight  at  last  of  the  light  of  freedom  which 
till  then  had  never  been  eclipsed.  For  if  the  things  that 
were  done  on  Easter  Eve  can  be  repeated  or  defended,  then 
there  can  be  no  more  trust  amongst  Irishmen ;  and  the  coun- 
try whose  sons  cannot  trust  one  another  can  never  be  freed. 
So  a  despair  blacker  than  his  dungeon  settled  on  Bernard's 
soul:  despair  for  his  country,  despair  for  his  friends,  despair 
for  himself.  And  out  of  his  despair  rose  a  hatred  such  as  he 
had  never  felt  before  for  the  prime  author  of  all  these  dis- 
asters :  the  great  soulless  enemy  that  had  seized  and  tortured 
and  wrecked  his  country  and  left  it  a  wasted  island  of 
thwarted  desire  and  lost  endeavour.  Over  and  over  again, 
sleeping  and  waking,  the  same  hatred,  the  same  anger,  the 
same  regret,  bitterness,  and  disillusionment  turn  and  turn 
about  haunted  and  racked  his  brain ;  over  and  over  again 
the  same  dreams  and  visions  flickered  before  his  imagination, 
wove  themselves  into  one  vast  pantomimic  nightmare  and 
left  his  mind  a  bewildered  incoherent  turbulence.  Grin- 


526  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

ning  faces  made  mock  of  him,  harpies  snatched  feasts  from 
him,  policemen  tore  him  from  the  altar  just  as  he  was  about 
to  place  the  wedding  ring  on  Mabel's  ringer.  He  argued 
interminably  with  hosts  of  people  that  he  knew  about  the 
same  perpetual  subject  —  Ireland  and  the  war  —  tormented 
as  much  by  his  own  fiery  logic  as  by  the  stupidily  of  his  op- 
ponents, and  could  never  prevail.  He  stooped  gigantically 
out  of  the  clouds  and  watched  fantastic  battles  raging  in  the 
island  of  his  childish  dreams.  He  saw  the  right  and  wrong 
in  their  quarrels  with  a  god-like  dispassionateness,  and  sought 
to  intervene:  vainly,  for  he  was  invisible  to  his  pigmy  cre- 
ation and  it  was  impalpable  to  him.  Then  the  ten  nations 
sprang  out  of  the  map  as  ten  ugly  little  figures  that  came 
quarrelling  to  his  feet  and  demanding  judgment  from  him, 
which,  when  he  gave  it,  they  laughed  to  scorn  and  went  on 
quarrelling.  He  saw  Europe  spread  out  before  him  like  a 
map,  with  little  grey  lines  of  smoke,  like  the  fume  of  a 
blown-out  match,  where  the  battles  were:  no  sound,  no  sign 
of  the  conflict  but  this ;  but  a  vast  and  woeful  wailing  arose 
on  all  sides  that  assailed  his  ears  in  his  ethereal  altitude.  He 
saw  the  whole  world  handed  over  to  three  demons  wearing 
the  faces  of  Sherringham,  Tracy-Sidbotham,  and  Musgrave. 
He  saw  the  malevolent  glee  with  which  they  took  the  sphere 
and  rent  it  asunder  and  tossed  it  into  a  great  fire.  The  fire 
leaped  up  all  round  him  and  he  found  himself  standing  in 
the  witches'  cauldron  of  Sackville  Street ;  saw  the  city  ringed 
round  by  hosts  of  demons  led  by  the  same  infernal  three. 
He  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  street  shouting  denunciations 
at  them,  at  which  they  shrieked  with  laughter.  He  argued 
and  expostulated  with  them,  and  the  demon  whose  face  was 
Sherringham's  cried :  "  Of  course  you're  right.  That's  why 
you're  going  to  be  crushed."  At  that  a  perfect  storm  of 
hatred  swept  over  him  and  he  rushed  headlong  at  the  ring  of 
ghastly  faces,  but  even  as  he  did  so  they  vanished,  and  he 
found  himself  in  a  dark  street  gazing  down  on  the  corpse  of 
the  soldier  he  had  killed.  His  eyes  were  fixed  in  a  hideous 
stare,  and  even  as  Bernard  looked  into  them  the  flame  of  life 


CATASTROPHE  527 

leaped  in  their  depths.  At  that  such  terror  came  upon  him 
as  he  had  never  experienced  in  life:  a  cold  transfixing  terror 
that  paralysed  every  muscle  in  his  body,  glued  his  feet  to  the 
ground,  and  set  every  molecule  in  his  brain  in  furious  vibra- 
tion: a  freezing  devastating  terror  from  which  death  itself 
would  seem  a  safe  and  kindly  refuge.  He  awoke  with  a 
shriek,  only  to  plunge  back  again  into  a  repetition,  more 
tangled  and  fantastical  than  before,  of  the  whole  hideous 
delirium.  In  a  few  hours  he  went  through  an  eternity  of 
torment.  He  had  lost  all  sense  of  time,  all  feeling  of  reality. 
Existence  had  become  phantasmagorical. 

His  head  ached  excruciatingly  and  seemed  ready  to  burst. 

And  then:  pitter-pitter-patter:  the  scurrying  of  little  feet. 
Rats?  .  .  .  Instantly  he  was  frozen  with  horror.  His 
heart  stood  still.  A  cold  sweat  broke  forth  on  his  brow. 
He  felt  his  hair  rising  on  his  scalp.  Pitter-pitter-patter.  It 
was  somewhere  in  the  room,  looking  at  him.  It  could  see 
in  the  dark.  Pitter-pitter-patter.  Another?  How  many? 
.  .  .  Frantically  he  realized  his  position,  buried  underground 
with  this  loathsome  pattering  horror.  Shudder  after  shud- 
der shook  his  frame.  He  remembered  that  he  was  weapon- 
less, and  tearing  off  one  boot  he  staggered  to  his  feet.  The 
rats,  frightened  by  the  noise,  scudded  away,  but  he  fancied 
they  were  assailing  him.  Their  numbers  sounded  legion. 
.  .  .  He  shrieked  with  terror  and  fell  .  .  . 

In  his  debilitated  condition  the  revival  of  a  childish  fear 
was  enough  to  turn  his  mental  balance,  already  weighted 
against  sanity  by  sorrow,  disillusionment,  darkness  and  soli- 
tude. It  was  a  madman  that  they  found  in  the  cell  on  Sun- 
day morning  —  a  piteous,  terror-distorted  figure  that  cow- 
ered in  a  corner,  beating  the  air  with  a  boot. 

8 

All  Hell  seemed  loose  in  Dublin  on  Saturday.  One  after 
another  the  Volunteer  outposts  had  been  swamped  or  driven 
in,  and  now  the  main  positions  were  isolated  one  from  an- 
other, while  the  cordon  was  closing  tighter  and  tighter  on 


528  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

the  centre  of  the  city,  where  somewhere  in  the  mean  streets 
behind  the  Post  Office  the  chief  command  had  sought  fresh 
quarters.  On  this  position  the  enemy's  artillery  was  now 
concentrated.  From  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  till  four  in 
the  afternoon  the  bombardment  went  on  relentlessly,  still 
answered  feebly  by  the  rifles  of  the  defenders,  until  the  west 
side  of  Sackville  Street,  Henry  Street,  and  part  of  Moore 
Street  was  made  fuel  for  a  conflagration  which  rivalled  that 
of  Thursday.  Once  more  the  unfortunate  people  of  Dublin 
saw  imminent  destruction  lowering  over  their  city.  Despair 
at  last  took  possession  of  them. 

"  Is  this  going  on  for  ever?  "  they  asked  each  other,  and 
even  as  they  waited  for  an  answer,  the  boom  of  the  big  guns 
ceased  and  the  rifle-fire  diminished  in  volume  and  was  no 
longer  continuous.  The  rebel  commanders  had  surrendered. 

Then  those  who  watched  from  a  distance  saw  a  strange 
sight.  A  little  band  of  men,  not  quite  a  hundred  in  number, 
weary,  tattered,  and  grimy,  came  marching  down  Sackville 
Street  under  a  fluttering  white  flag.  They  were  met  at  the 
bridge-head  by  a  party  of  military,  and  there  at  the  foot  of 
O'Connell's  statue,  with  the  flaming  buildings  forming  a 
lurid  background  to  the  scene,  they  laid  down  their  arms. 
The  insurrection  was  over. 

Amongst  those  who  surrendered  was  Fergus  Moore. 
Throughout  the  fighting  this  man  had  performed  deeds 
which  would  have  been  heroic  had  they  not  been  inspired  by 
suicidal  determination.  When  the  flag  was  shot  away  it 
was  he  who  had  fixed  it  up  again  amid  a  hail  of  bullets; 
when  the  Post  Office  was  in  flames  it  was  he  who  was  fore- 
most in  the  futile  attempts  to  extinguish  them ;  when  volun- 
teers had  been  called  for  to  storm  a  British  barricade  he  had 
been  the  first  to  offer  himself  and  the  only  one  to  return  un- 
scathed. He  had  sought  for  death  and  it  had  been  denied 
him,  and  now  he  handed  in  his  arms  and  equipment  with 
the  same  bitter  smile  still  hovering  on  his  war-stained 
countenance. 


CATASTROPHE  529 

9 

Next  morning  Hektor  was  arrested  in  bed,  but  Stephen, 
who  was  already  up  and  nearly  dressed,  made  his  escape  by 
the  roof.  By  bluff  and  good  fortune  he  succeeded  in  passing 
the  cordon;  got  away  westward  out  of  the  city;  swam  the 
Liffey  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Lucan;  and  struck  out  for 
his  home  in  the  mountains.  There  was  a  hiding  place  in 
Glencoole  which  he  had  discovered  as  a  boy  and  which  he 
now  intended  to  make  use  of,  relying  on  his  father  to  supply 
him  with  provisions. 

In  the  evening  he  reached  the  top  of  the  glen  and  turned 
round  to  look  back  on  the  city  from  the  spot  whence  he  had 
so  often  gazed  as  a  boy.  In  the  darkness  he  could  dimly 
discern  the  great  plain  which,  stretching  from  sea  to  sea  and 
dividing  the  northern  mountains  from  the  southern,  had 
rendered  possible  the  conquest  of  Ireland.  Very  black  to 
the  east  lay  the  sea  with  a  thousand  twinkling  lights  girdling 
its  shore,  and  the  great  ray  of  the  Bailey  sweeping  in  a  mag- 
nificent circle  over  the  cliffs  of  Howth  and  the  waters  of  the 
bay.  On  the  edge  of  the  blackness  a  dull  red  spot  like  a 
cooling  cinder  marked  the  site  of  the  city,  and  in  the  sky 
above  it  was  a  delicate  glow.  The  wind  sighed  in  the  val- 
ley behind  him. 

He  stood  for  a  moment  wrapped  in  melancholy  contem- 
plation, but  shook  the  mood  off  abruptly. 

"  Regrets  are  waste  of  time,"  he  said.  "  What's  done  is 
done.  What  of  the  future?  Is  conscription  coming? 
Can  we  repel  it  by  diplomacy,  or  shall  we  have  to  fight? 
.  .  .  And  what  shall  be  the  national  policy  now?  .  .  .  Will 
constitutionalism  revive?  What  will  the  war  bring?  .  .  . 
Is  the  Revolution  coming?  .  .  .  What  shall  be  our  next 
step?" 

His  thoughts  were  far  away  in  the  future  as  he  turned  and 
walked  down  the  valley. 


530  THE  WASTED  ISLAND 

10 

When  everything  was  over  the  people  of  Dublin  came 
forth  in  their  thousands  to  look  at  the  wreckage;  and 
mothers  and  wives  went  searching  the  barracks  and  prisons 
and  hospitals  and  morgues  for  those  who  had  fought,  or  for 
those  who  had  ventured  out  foraging  or  sight-seeing  and  had 
never  returned.  Among  these  went  Lady  Lascelles  seeking 
her  son,  whom  she  found  at  last  by  the  aid  of  Mr.  G«orge 
Molloy,  the  rising  young  solicitor  (who  afterwards  took 
charge  of  the  lunacy  proceedings). 

"What  news?"  asked  Sandy,  anxiously,  from  his  couch 
when  she  returned  home  after  her  heart-rending  discovery. 

Lady  Lascelles  threw  herself  down  on  her  knees  beside 
her  youngest  son  and  burst  into  tears  on  his  shoulder. 

"  Is  he  dead  ?  "  asked  Sandy. 

"  Worse,"  sobbed  the  mother.  "  O,  my  three  boys!  "  she 
cried.  "  My  broken  wasted  boys !  " 

ii 

In  his  refuge  in  Glencoole,  Stephen  read  of  the  collapse 
of  the  rebellion ;  of  the  minor  skirmishes  in  Galway,  Wex- 
ford  and  Fingall,  where  evidently  the  countermanding  orders 
had  gone  astray  or  been  disobeyed;  and  of  the  quiescence  of 
the  rest  of  the  country.  It  was  quite  clear  that  Ireland  was 
both  puzzled  and  annoyed  by  the  whole  affair;  she  repudi- 
ated the  insurrection  and  its  authors  with  anger  and  disdain ; 
and  contemplated  their  possible  punishment  with  indiffer- 
ence. It  seemed  for  a  time  as  if  militant  nationalism  had 
slain  and  discredited  itself. 

And  then  came  the  shootings.  .  .  .  Pearse  and  the  leaders 
undid  by  their  death  much  of  the  harm  which  the  insurrec- 
tion had  done  to  their  cause,  for  Ireland  roused  herself  in 
rage  when  her  sons  were  slain  by  the  foreigner. 

News  came  in  slowly  to  Stephen,  for  his  father  dared  not 
visit  him  too  often.  First  the  lists  of  the  executed  trickled 
in;  then  he  heard  of  the  death  in  action  of  The  O'Rahilly, 
McGurk,  Malone,  and  others;  then  of  the  arrest  of  Case- 


CATASTROPHE  531 

ment;  and  finally,  of  the  rounding  up  of  the  Volunteers  all 
over  the  country.  Crowley  and  Umpleby  and  Moore  were 
amongst  those  deported  and  interned  at  Frongoch;  Brian 
Mallow  and  Hektor  O'Flaherty  received  sentences  of  twenty 
and  ten  years'  penal  servitude.  Saddest  fate  of  all  was  that 
of  Bernard  Lascelles. 

"  What  a  catalogue  of  wasted  material!  "  he  muttered. 

There  was  no  news  of  O'Dwyer.  Presumably  he  had 
escaped  arrest.  One  vaguely  familiar  name  hovered  hither 
and  thither  through  the  newspapers.  Mr.  Molloy,  the  ris- 
ing young  solicitor,  rose  higher  and  higher  on  the  wreck- 
age ... 

"  And  now,"  said  Michael  Ward  to  his  son,  "  now  that 
everything  has  turned  out  as  I  told  you  it  would,  what  do 
you  mean  to  do?  " 

"  I  suppose,"  replied  Stephen,  "  we  must  begin  all  over 
again." 


THE    END 


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